Juno News - Ep. 1 ｜ Douglas Murray ｜ Mob rule, identity & the future of the nation state

00:00:00.240 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm with True North and welcome to the very first episode of the True

00:00:05.400 North Spring Speaker Series.

00:00:07.780 The series is launched so that we can sit down with some of the world's greatest thinkers,

00:00:11.560 some of Canada's most prominent intellectuals and public leaders to have more in-depth conversations

00:00:17.520 about ideas and the state of the world, the state of conservatism in 2020.

00:00:22.440 So our first guest today is Douglas Murray, the British author and journalist.

00:00:27.240 Douglas is the author of the 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe, and his most recent

00:00:32.280 book, The Madness of Crowds, looks into cancel culture and identity politics and how all

00:00:38.200 of this fighting and division is really tearing our society apart.

00:00:43.200 So this event was co-sponsored by Civitas Canada.

00:00:46.560 Civitas Canada is a society for public intellectuals and thinkers who are classical liberal, conservative

00:00:53.960 or libertarian.

00:00:55.080 We have annual get togethers and this was one of those meetings.

00:00:58.260 So after my 30 or so minute interview with Douglas Murray, we opened it up to a live audience.

00:01:04.420 The live audience was made up of Civitas members who were able to ask their questions and engage

00:01:09.520 in a conversation with Douglas, which allowed us to talk about so many great and interesting

00:01:13.960 topics.

00:01:14.960 Here's that interview.

00:01:15.960 I hope you enjoy it.

00:01:17.460 Welcome and thank you so much for joining our meeting today.

00:01:25.080 Well, thank you, Candice.

00:01:26.080 It's a great pleasure to be with you and your friends and colleagues over there.

00:01:29.260 So thank you.

00:01:30.260 I've really been wanting to get your take on the current situation we find ourselves

00:01:34.840 in in the world right now with not only the coronavirus pandemic, but also the resulting

00:01:41.460 lockdowns.

00:01:42.460 So just off the bat, do you think that the government has gotten things right?

00:01:46.640 Do you think that they've went too far, not far enough?

00:01:49.960 What is your take on the sort of current situation we're in right now?

00:01:52.800 I'm slightly disappointing some of my readers for having a rather commonplace opinion on

00:01:58.300 this, this matter.

00:02:01.300 I think it depends obviously country by country.

00:02:04.280 Most of our country's leaderships have done fairly similar things.

00:02:08.800 There have been some outriders like Sweden, but, but most certainly the world's democracies

00:02:14.920 have acted in similar ways and acted similar measures.

00:02:18.800 I mean, I think that what I would say at the moment is it looks like, touch wood, it looks

00:02:24.260 like in both our countries, we've managed to duck what was predicted to be worst case

00:02:31.380 scenario.

00:02:32.380 Certainly in the UK, we haven't had a situation that we're fearing at the very beginning.

00:02:38.800 Suppose it's suitable then the debate happens whether or not that's because of things we've

00:02:45.800 done or it would have been the case anyway, or it would have been better anyway.

00:02:51.720 I am very skeptical myself about people who profess to be experts in virology who never

00:02:59.560 wrote about pandemics or thought about them until six weeks ago.

00:03:03.540 And I think there's a very, very fine judgment call that has to be made on this.

00:03:08.200 And it isn't only the territory of the virologists and the experts in pandemics, because obviously

00:03:16.860 there is also the necessity of the economy, which is in a situation I think we can never

00:03:24.000 predict it as being this bad.

00:03:26.780 So obviously these are competing forces and questions at the moment.

00:03:30.800 I just, I think it is a very fine judgment call that has to be made.

00:03:36.180 I don't envy the political leaders who have to make it incidentally.

00:03:41.240 But I am concerned at any rate about some of the, some of the stuff that sort of floats around

00:03:49.080 that is, I'm sure comes across your desk as it does mine, which likes to present this as

00:03:55.120 some kind of, you know, grab by government and so on and I mean, look, we are all in a totally

00:04:00.780 unprecedented situation.

00:04:02.780 You know, the American government has done something not that dissimilar to doing UBI as

00:04:07.260 a one off.

00:04:10.260 And you know, a news in brief headline the other week in the UK was that one in 20 people

00:04:14.600 had lost their jobs that week, you know, that was that way down the bottom of the page.

00:04:19.880 So I'm, I'm, I'm very cautious about this.

00:04:24.400 I follow what is, I think the mainstream opinion on it simply because I have no special insight

00:04:32.380 or expertise that would give me the confidence to differ as radically as you would need to

00:04:37.680 differ from it in order to denounce all the governments like those of Canada and Britain

00:04:43.120 as having been in some ways wrong.

00:04:44.500 It's interesting that you mentioned Sweden though, because one of the biggest sort of

00:04:50.680 differences between how the UK, Canada, the United States, and most of, most of your, most

00:04:56.140 of the world combated this was sort of a knee jerk reaction to shut everything down, lock

00:05:03.880 everything down.

00:05:04.500 And of course we had such limited knowledge at the time about what the infection rate was,

00:05:09.500 what the death rate was, all those kinds of things.

00:05:11.540 But, but, but you look at Sweden and you know, they kind of issued guidelines, general guidelines,

00:05:17.000 but ultimately they trusted the citizens to, to be responsible.

00:05:21.040 Whereas when you look at what, what the Canadian government did, what the UK government did,

00:05:24.540 I mean, there, it doesn't seem like there was much reflection on, you know, upholding some

00:05:29.500 of our sacred values, including for Canadians, you know, values in the, in the charter of rights

00:05:34.140 and freedoms.

00:05:35.140 You know, basic, basic things like freedom of mobility, the right to a timely trial, if

00:05:40.600 you're, if you're charged with a crime, or of course, you know, economic rights, or, or at

00:05:46.540 least the right to pursue a livelihood, there wasn't really given any thought into those

00:05:51.280 things.

00:05:52.280 And now we're six weeks deep here.

00:05:53.600 So maybe you can reflect on, on the lack of that.

00:05:56.600 But I just mentioned two things that one is, I've been used all my life in absolutely every

00:06:03.000 area and discipline to that always being a Swedish alternative, it's always a Scandinavian

00:06:09.460 alternative, you know, some ways, sometimes it's Norway, the Norway option.

00:06:14.840 The reason I mentioned this is because in almost every area that a Scandinavian precedent is believed

00:06:20.540 to be desirable in countries like America, Canada, or Britain.

00:06:26.020 The people advocating it, whatever it is, left wing, right wing, whatever, always forget

00:06:30.640 the, the very unique nature of Scandinavian societies.

00:06:34.780 And I mean, you know, without getting too deep into it, I think that is a significant factor

00:06:40.180 in that I, I wouldn't like to see, say, the French government of Emmanuel Macron try the

00:06:47.640 same kind of trust in the people as, as the Swedish government has, has, has done.

00:06:53.280 In the UK, as I understand it, which is a country obviously I know most about in this, this pandemic.

00:07:00.040 As I understand it, the main problem in government, the main thing that triggered the decision to

00:07:06.500 have the lockdown was that the government believed that it was quite likely that the National Health

00:07:12.760 Service was going to be swamped very swiftly.

00:07:15.980 That there weren't enough ventilators, weren't enough beds, and that within a very short space

00:07:19.480 of time, we'd have pictures across the media of people dying, gasping outside of hospitals.

00:07:25.980 And there's the question that comes up from the media about the extent of which public opinion

00:07:34.800 and indeed political opinion ends up being or can end up being almost completely dominated

00:07:40.200 by what will the media do.

00:07:43.700 But that's, you know, that's not a small concern to have if you're a government and, you know,

00:07:50.380 it's not like Johnson government needed to worry about, you know, a sort of imminent election

00:07:56.620 or anything like Donald Trump in America, they, they made that decision having just won a landslide

00:08:00.960 only a couple of months earlier.

00:08:02.200 And, you know, you could see in Boris Johnson's reaction, the speech where he announced the first measures,

00:08:08.200 how incredibly reluctant he was to do this, and that he couldn't believe that a sort of liberal,

00:08:14.700 in the true sense, conservative prime minister was having to announce this.

00:08:18.700 But then, of course, you know, we almost lost the prime minister.

00:08:21.700 I mean, it was a 50-50 thing, as I understand it, when he was in intensive care.

00:08:28.700 And that is, that in itself has been, I think, a pretty solitary thing to have happened.

00:08:34.700 I mean, you know, we were in a very perilous situation there for a bit.

00:08:40.700 I don't want to belabor this point too much, but it does remind me of an email, a question

00:08:45.700 that I got from one of the Civitas members, who was asking about, this is from Dr. Bruce Party,

00:08:50.700 who's a law professor at Queen's University, and he said that you've been having a public

00:08:55.700 spat with Peter Hitchens about the pandemic, and he provided a fairly lengthy quote here,

00:09:02.700 where Peter is basically just saying that, you know, the, you know, I see my country in danger,

00:09:09.700 grave and lasting threats to its freedom and prosperity.

00:09:12.700 A fear of future of overmighty officials and police displaying an unbridled insolence of office,

00:09:18.700 dead political consensus combined with confiscary taxes, shriveled savings and pensions,

00:09:23.700 lower wages, living standards, dot, dot, dot. 0.98

00:09:26.700 If Douglas wants to support this idiocy, he should say so. 0.98

00:09:29.700 If he's against it, he should say so. 0.99

00:09:31.700 So just wondering if you could respond to that.

00:09:33.700 We haven't actually had a public spat. I've known Peter for many years.

00:09:38.700 And no, I, I, he is an enormously disputatious man, and I have a lot of admiration for him.

00:09:45.700 And I simply remarked in a column in the Spectator in passing that I admired Peter for coming out so completely against the government's policy,

00:09:54.700 but said, I don't know if Peter is right or wrong, which is correct. I don't.

00:10:00.700 Incidentally, I don't think he knows or can know whether he's right or not.

00:10:04.700 I particularly don't know whether Peter's right or wrong because I've never known him to write about this subject before,

00:10:09.700 or to have thought about it or considered it at any length or any depth.

00:10:13.700 And one of the things that has guided my own writing and thinking over the years is to try very hard not to speak or think out loud about things you haven't thought about very much.

00:10:27.700 And, you know, I think that the importance of dissent dissident society is exceptionally important.

00:10:36.700 And the fact in my column was I admired Peter for being one figure, a disputatious figure who takes to the battle.

00:10:45.700 Peter doesn't turn out, turns out he doesn't really take compliments well.

00:10:51.700 And was furious that I didn't simply agree with him, but I don't because I can't.

00:10:57.700 And I, it's, it's, it's possible that all of our governments have been wrong and Peter is right.

00:11:04.700 But I wouldn't bet on it.

00:11:07.700 And as I say, I, I hold to my belief that you've got to have very, very good amount of knowledge and expertise

00:11:19.700 to claim that incredibly careful calibration that all of our governments are having to make is in fact not that careful a question.

00:11:30.700 It's not that difficult.

00:11:31.700 In fact, it's incredibly easy and straightforward.

00:11:34.700 And it's contrary to what they're doing.

00:11:36.700 I, and I just don't have the confidence that Peter does that.

00:11:39.700 And so that's what I'd say.

00:11:43.700 That's fair enough.

00:11:44.700 So there's still so much uncertainty around this virus.

00:11:47.700 One thing that's becoming a little more clear, Douglas, and you, you wrote about this in the UK sign this morning,

00:11:53.700 was about the, the role that China has played, you know, either in, in sort of hiding early information about the virus to allow it to become a global problem.

00:12:03.700 Yeah.

00:12:04.700 Or perhaps even the fact that it may have leaked from a virology lab in the same city of Wuhan.

00:12:09.700 So what do you think the long term, what do you think the short term and the long term ramifications will be for China and its relationship with the West?

00:12:18.700 Yeah. I mean, this is obviously the thing that is, if we have, if we have managed to duck the worst case scenario in the pandemic,

00:12:27.700 obviously now we face what could in the long run seem to be an even worse scenario, which is our economic immiseration.

00:12:36.700 I would say that first of all, yes, the piece I wrote this morning about this was that firstly, we need to know as soon as possible exactly what has happened.

00:12:48.700 And in when you're in the middle of the mortem, it's probably not worth doing the post mortem,

00:12:55.700 but we ought to do the post mortem as soon as possible on this.

00:13:00.700 I think that the President, President Trump's remarks on Friday or Thursday night,

00:13:05.700 where he raised the question of whether the lab in Wuhan actually being where the virus had come from.

00:13:12.700 And this, by the way, had been speculated about.

00:13:14.700 I'd spoken to officials in America about this quite early on in the crisis.

00:13:20.700 This was something that all experts are speculating on early on.

00:13:26.700 It seems strange that it had come from the area where this particular laboratory is.

00:13:33.700 And it seems perfectly plausible that the Chinese authorities took the, as it were,

00:13:39.700 international embarrassment of the wet market story as being the acceptable story compared to it actually coming out of a laboratory in their country. 0.91

00:13:52.700 And then, but either way you do that.

00:13:54.700 And then, by the way, there's a question of how deliberate or otherwise it was.

00:13:56.700 And that's the bit that's obviously going to be hardest to work out, but in many ways will be most important.

00:14:01.700 Whatever the origin of the virus, one thing we do know very clearly now is the beginnings of the knowledge of the extent to which the Chinese authorities are responsible,

00:14:17.700 not just for this emerging, which is a bit of the question, as I said, is open.

00:14:22.700 But the almost point at this stage, which is that they covered up what was happening.

00:14:32.700 They lied, they prevaricated, they did much more that meant that they turned a local problem into a global nightmare.

00:14:42.700 And this, of course, as we all know, I mean, this is the common behaviour in totalitarian societies.

00:14:49.700 Anyone who's watched the amazing Netflix series on the nuclear meltdown in Soviet Russia at Chernobyl will know this.

00:15:02.700 Totalitarian societies act in certain ways when disasters occur.

00:15:07.700 And this particular disaster of the virus, the Chinese Communist Party has acted in exactly the normal way, 1.00

00:15:14.700 which is to think that its own survival, own PR image, own self-image is what's most important to protect,

00:15:22.700 rather than trying to do everything to be open and honest and let the world know what's coming to them.

00:15:28.700 And I think that there is absolutely everything has to be on the table in terms of exacting a price that the Chinese Communist Party has to pay.

00:15:41.700 It cannot simply have burnt down the world economy and then, you know, offer us a watering can afterwards,

00:15:48.700 which is frankly the site of like Huawei embossed boxes of masks being handed to Dutch officials.

00:15:57.700 And as if that sort of, that'll do.

00:16:00.700 It's an incredibly serious situation.

00:16:04.700 It's a geopolitical problem for us because too many of our countries have been too reliant on China for too long.

00:16:11.700 Too many of our officials have been able to enrich themselves by their relationships with Chinese companies and others.

00:16:18.700 So I think that a real reckoning has to occur after this.

00:16:26.700 Well, one of the examples that was in that article you had was a German newspaper demanding reparations from China.

00:16:34.700 And the Chinese reaction was sort of to turn things around and say that the German paper was promoting discrimination and bigotry against Chinese people.

00:16:45.700 I think that's such an important distinction.

00:16:48.700 In Canada, there was there's a newspaper called the Epoch Times.

00:16:51.700 It's run by Chinese dissidents from the Falun Gong community.

00:16:55.700 And they put out sort of a full page spread blaming the Chinese Communist Party for the pandemic.

00:17:03.700 And they mailed it out. Free copies were mailed out to Canadians across the country.

00:17:07.700 Well, the CBC, the state broadcaster in Canada, wrote up sort of a hit piece, an article,

00:17:13.700 calling, get this, calling the Epoch Times racist and saying that they were pushing disinformation.

00:17:21.700 But the paper itself is run by Chinese dissidents.

00:17:24.700 It's expanded a bit beyond that now.

00:17:26.700 But the owner and the origin of the paper and, you know, everything in the stories was quite factual and fair.

00:17:32.700 And so to see Canada state broadcasters sort of using the Chinese line that if you if you criticize the Communist Party,

00:17:40.700 it's because you're motivated by by some kind of, you know, racism or bad intentions. 0.98

00:17:46.700 It's just it's so pathetic, isn't it? I mean, just so pathetic. 1.00

00:17:51.700 A line of mine that occasionally gets quoted is I said somewhere once that, you know, in societies like ours, 0.98

00:17:57.700 when the barbarians at the gates will be debating what gender pronouns they'll want.

00:18:02.700 And I just think it's contemptible.

00:18:06.700 And the the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party in response is utterly typical. 1.00

00:18:12.700 And the thing that so many idiots in our societies don't get is that their stupidity is exactly what totalitarian governments like that are after. 1.00

00:18:24.700 You know, if if the Chinese Communist Party can can say that built the German paper you refer to, 1.00

00:18:32.700 which did this very impressive spread the other day and the demand for reparations, global reparations.

00:18:38.700 If the Chinese Communist Party attacks built for racism, it isn't because it thinks that built is being racist.

00:18:50.700 It's because it knows that that allegation matters in our societies.

00:18:57.700 It matters in Germany like it matters in Britain and it matters in Canada.

00:19:01.700 We're worried about that.

00:19:03.700 The idea that the Chinese Communist Party cares a damn about discrimination anywhere in the world, let alone in Germany, is a fantastical idea. 0.88

00:19:17.700 So so that the thing in this is is always, you know, I say that that we've got to work out when we are being played and when we are being used. 0.98

00:19:26.700 And anyone who calls for this stuff is being played, they're being used, they're the dolt. 0.86

00:19:35.700 And I think you could certainly say that the CBC is is guilty of that in many ways. 0.96

00:19:40.700 I just want to pick up on this idea of sort of weaponizing accusations of racism, because it's not just authoritarian regimes that do it.

00:19:47.700 Douglas, you you I think your book, The Strange Death of Europe really touched on some topics that, you know, if you if you if you try to zero in on criticizing sort of maybe cultural issues that might come from, you know, people immigrating from Syria, say that they bring with them, whether it be, you know, the treatment towards women, treatment towards Jews, treatment towards gays. 0.81

00:20:11.700 The the the the reaction and sort of the the impulse is to say, well, if you're criticizing these things about this person, it's really because you must hate Syrians or you must hate Muslims or you must be a hateful bigoted person.

00:20:24.700 And so how has how was that? I know I know Strange Death of Europe came out, you know, four years ago now, and a lot of things have changed in the world.

00:20:32.700 But but but but but how do you think that that sort of came about that idea that you can't criticize cultural differences in people without getting that accusation of being called a racist?

00:20:45.700 Well, well, I mean, to steal man, the argument, the opposite of straw manning something to steal man it, it is that everyone is capable of bigotry and that bigotry is is exists in all societies that exist in our societies and therefore to be a good person

00:21:07.700 person and to pursue a good life would be to say, be an anti racist and the anti sexist and anti, you know, anti homophobe and a few more things.

00:21:24.700 And that makes you good in the eyes of your peers and contemporaries.

00:21:27.700 That's the basis for it. I think that there's a misunderstanding of the origin of that, which is that it is true that bigotry exists in all societies and it can exist in all people.

00:21:43.700 It doesn't, of course, exist simply in some people and not in others.

00:21:46.700 It's not like they're the children of light and the children of darkness.

00:21:49.700 And one of the extraordinary things is this sort of Manichaean interpretation of our species.

00:21:58.700 And, you know, of course, if you say to people, you know, which one would you like to be on the side of the goodies or the side of the baddies?

00:22:04.700 A lot of people say, I'd love to be on the side of the good guys.

00:22:07.700 And it's not much more complex than that.

00:22:10.700 It's not much more complex than that.

00:22:11.700 I think, however, what's happened is we've been in a version of something similar to what was known as Moynihan's Law.

00:22:23.700 You may remember the late American Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

00:22:29.700 He, among other things, a former American ambassador in the 1970s, he had something known as Moynihan's Law

00:22:37.700 where he pointed out that human rights, claims of human rights violations occur in exactly inverse proportion to human rights violations.

00:22:49.700 That is, the countries where you hear about the most are countries where they happen the least.

00:22:56.700 Because the countries in which they happen the most, you don't hear about them.

00:23:01.700 You know, we don't get to hear what level of transphobia exists in North Korea.

00:23:08.700 There's a good reason for that.

00:23:10.700 We don't get to hear, you know, what studies there have been of whether or not racism in China is up or down this year.

00:23:16.700 How many hate crimes have there been in China this year?

00:23:19.700 We don't know the facts.

00:23:22.700 But a simple person with no particularly malevolent intent may well as a consequence grow up thinking that, you know,

00:23:33.700 it's countries like Canada and Britain that are the really bigoted countries.

00:23:39.700 And it's, you know, it's the rest of the world which lives in this sort of Edenic, non-human rights violating, rights respecting paradise.

00:23:49.700 But I do think this is something similar that's been going on.

00:23:52.700 Our societies spend all of our time talking about bigotry and prejudice and much more.

00:24:00.700 And, you know, I mean, I haven't spent that much time in Canada, but I've been there a few times.

00:24:04.700 And it doesn't, I don't see Gestalt-like figures, you know, parading the streets waiting to beat up minorities of any kind.

00:24:12.700 You know, I've always found your average Canadian pretty easy to get along with.

00:24:16.700 And I think there's something really perverse in this.

00:24:22.700 It just has to point out that a fair estimation of our societies has not occurred in recent years.

00:24:30.700 And that my shortcut, you know, shoot down to that is to simply to point out to people, you know, in the 1930s and 40s, Jews weren't trying to break into Nazi Germany.

00:24:42.700 You know, there weren't, there weren't others from around the world desperate to get it, make it to Munich.

00:24:50.700 There's a reason, there's a reason why our countries are attractive.

00:24:56.700 There's a reason why the world wants to come here.

00:24:58.700 And it's, it's, it's definitely the opposite of because we're bigoted, racist.

00:25:05.700 So, I again, I mean, I wrote about that in The Strange Death of Europe on the issues of race and culture and identity, 0.70

00:25:13.700 and then extended that in the madness of crowds into all of the other, you know, the landmines that I had previously.

00:25:21.700 It does seem like it's been created intentionally, though, to, to stop conversation.

00:25:26.700 Like if you have genuine concerns about, you know, bringing in tens of thousands of people from a community that doesn't have a fundamental respect for women,

00:25:36.700 doesn't have fundamental respect for religious minorities and ethnic minorities and sexual minorities, you know, 0.76

00:25:41.700 you know, but, but instead of having that conversation, you know,

00:25:44.700 we're just sort of slapped with this accusation that does sort of create a chill in, in society.

00:25:50.700 And, you know,

00:25:52.700 Of course it creates a chill.

00:25:54.700 It's, it's about the most chilling thing because it's, it's the most damaging non-criminal thing you can be accused of.

00:26:04.700 And on occasions, as we all know, actually treads into being a criminal matter.

00:26:10.700 At least, you know, it's treated in, in, in the court system in all our countries increasingly as such.

00:26:17.700 So, yes, I mean, it's about as chilling as you can get.

00:26:20.700 And the, and the problem is again, is that it means that dishonest actors can get away with too much.

00:26:25.700 You know, Roger Kimball, who edits the new criterion magazine in New York, I think is the person who first came up with the idea that.

00:26:36.700 I very much admire that, that you, you, you, you will not be able to write this until, for instance,

00:26:44.700 The cost of making a frivolous and erroneous accusation of racism against somebody carries a societal, let's say societal punishment, a social punishment, a social, you know, degradation similar to that, which would be put at somebody's feet.

00:27:09.700 If it turned out, they were a racist. So the problem is, is it's a free shot.

00:27:16.700 You say somebody is a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist or all of the above, because they often come as a team.

00:27:23.700 They do notice as accusations. And you, you, you throw these at somebody.

00:27:29.700 And if the person says, and this happens all the time, as we know, the person says, hang on, um, um, um,

00:27:36.700 How can I be a racist, please?

00:27:38.700 Well, the person making the accusation just, it's away.

00:27:42.700 It doesn't, it doesn't seem to have any impact even on their day, let alone their lives.

00:27:49.700 So it's a free shot. And that's what our societies have to address.

00:27:53.700 Why haven't we by this point made there be a societal cost for lying about people and defaming people?

00:28:04.700 And it shouldn't be a matter for the courts in most cases, I think, apart from the cases of absolutely egregious libel and slander.

00:28:14.700 Um, but it should be something that our societies are better at policing.

00:28:17.700 You know, there's that totally fake frivolous person.

00:28:21.700 He just goes around trying to make a living by claiming everyone else is a bigot that, you know, don't listen to that person.

00:28:27.700 That should be very normal.

00:28:30.700 Yeah. And if anything, I mean, you say that they, they have no ramifications against them.

00:28:35.700 It's not even that, I mean, as you point out, you know, in, in madness of crowds that they get celebrated for it.

00:28:40.700 And in a lot of ways, their social status in claiming victimhood and claiming that you have been the victim of some kind of a hate act or discrimination.

00:28:48.700 And, and, and sort of that, that's a way that they gain, uh, some social status.

00:28:53.700 Uh, I wanted to ask you about this just shifting, I guess, towards madness of crowds.

00:28:58.700 So there's a new Netflix show, uh, that my husband and I have been watching.

00:29:02.700 It's, um, it's about the 1990s Chicago Bulls basketball team and Michael Jordan.

00:29:07.700 And, um, it's called the last dance. It's really excellent.

00:29:11.700 Um, anyways, you're watching this sort of look into the 1990s and the 1990s just seem so, I mean, it seems so far away, so far ago.

00:29:20.700 Um, and, and such a sort of peaceful, idyllic society, you know, the, the biggest things that people were concerned about and looking at were, you know, the basketball team and these huge stars that were created and these big brands, you know, the, the, the, even the biggest scandal in the white house was, it was a supposed affair with an intern.

00:29:39.700 I mean, you know, really small, small potatoes compared to the kinds of things that we're dealing with.

00:29:43.700 So, you know, looking back at the 1990s, it, it almost seemed like some of the major issues that we're dealing with today.

00:29:49.700 And, and that we started dealing with around 2015, 2016, those issues were, were like solved.

00:29:54.700 They were like a thing of the past, even, even the way that Michael Jordan talked about how he had experienced some racism.

00:30:00.700 But that, that was in the past and that was in the South and, and, and now it was different and, and, and that kind of thing.

00:30:06.700 It seemed like somehow, you know, in, in that era, we, we felt like we had moved beyond some of these major issues.

00:30:12.700 And then as you address in Madalissa's crowds, you know, by 2015, 2016, 2017, we were right in the midst of it.

00:30:18.700 And so much so that the rules are constantly changing and every day there are new rules.

00:30:22.700 So things that were okay yesterday are no longer okay now.

00:30:25.700 So how do we get to that situation where we, it seemed like we'd move past everything.

00:30:29.700 And now all of a sudden everything's coming back and it's coming back way worse than ever before.

00:30:33.700 Yeah, I think that's better. That's right.

00:30:35.700 I mean, I, I, as you know, I use the analogy of, of it being on the rights issues, like seeing a train drawing into the stage.

00:30:41.700 That it's, that is its desired destination.

00:30:45.700 Only to suddenly get a head of steam, go shooting off down the tracks, off the tracks and scattering people in its wake.

00:30:51.700 You know, that, that, you know, there has been racism in the past.

00:30:55.700 I don't doubt there is, there is racism today, but it's never been, there's never been less of it than there is in, you know, modern Canada or modern.

00:31:03.700 So why, why is it presented as if it's never been worse?

00:31:07.700 You know, there has been sexism in the past.

00:31:09.700 Women were prevented from doing all sorts of things in their lives in the past. 1.00

00:31:13.700 You know, there has been homophobia in the past, you know, of course.

00:31:17.700 But why do we hear now about our countries being so damn bigoted at the point to which they've never been less bigoted on the question?

00:31:26.700 And I think that the truth is, I'll watch that Netflix series.

00:31:31.700 I thought there wasn't a Netflix series that I hadn't seen.

00:31:33.700 So I'm delighted to hear that.

00:31:35.700 It's brand new. I think it just came out last week.

00:31:37.700 But I think that one thing that has, that has caused this is something that has happened in our lifetimes.

00:31:45.700 I think in the lives of everyone that's with us today is something very curious that isn't raised often enough.

00:31:56.700 And it is this.

00:31:57.700 It is the emergence of the idea that somebody who has suffered is more worthy of listening to than somebody who has not.

00:32:10.700 And again, to steel man this, it's not totally untrue in certain circumstances.

00:32:21.700 So, for instance, it is true that when Solzhenitsyn came out of Russia, we wanted to hear from him, not just because he was a great writer,

00:32:32.700 but because he was a man who suffered and knew firsthand what he was speaking about.

00:32:38.700 So there are, there is something in it, but it isn't infinite and it doesn't exist all the way down to the most minute grievance.

00:32:50.700 Now, there's a second thing which is worth pointing out, which is that the left in most of our countries has for a long time now made a particular mistake.

00:33:02.700 which is the mistake of thinking that when somebody suffers, they become good.

00:33:07.700 Um, uh, my colleague, uh, journalists in the UK and Spectator and elsewhere, Nick Cohen, who's very much of the political left pointed this out 15 years ago in his book, What's Left?

00:33:19.700 You know, why did the left always think, for instance, that peoples who had suffered under a terrible government,

00:33:27.700 under the next government would be wonderful people because they'd suffered.

00:33:32.700 So, I mean, they wouldn't be, you know, corrupt or they wouldn't do it again.

00:33:35.700 They wouldn't be violent themselves towards anybody and so on and so forth.

00:33:39.700 This, this, this erroneous idea that suffering, uh, brings, uh, insight, which it does to some people, but not to everybody.

00:33:48.700 And that being a victim means you should be listened to.

00:33:53.700 Now, the problem is, is that this means that there has been a stampede toward victimhood.

00:33:59.700 And are, I think I could probably say this, this was some, we don't know each other very well, but we know each other a bit.

00:34:06.700 And I think I can say with some certainty that in our lives, we're probably both and many other people here brought out belief.

00:34:14.700 Um, when you suffered, you didn't go on about it.

00:34:19.700 Now one, what was one reason in Britain, there was a phrase mustn't grumble.

00:34:23.700 I can't think when the last time was that I heard that phrase.

00:34:27.700 Uh, if that's the least likely phrase to hear these days, how are you?

00:34:31.700 Oh, mustn't grumble. No, national sport is grumbling.

00:34:36.700 Um, and, and the reason I mentioned this is because, uh, the idea that we were, I think, brought up with was among other things, you don't moan.

00:34:46.700 You don't assume your life is that much worse than anyone else.

00:34:49.700 Because among other things, you don't know what the person you're speaking with and to has gone through today, or indeed in their lives.

00:34:57.700 So among other things, it's enormously presumptuous to present yourself as having suffered because somebody looked at you meanly once.

00:35:07.700 You know, you might be speaking to somebody who was orphaned by the age of 15 or something.

00:35:12.700 How the hell do you know what they've gone through?

00:35:14.700 How the hell do any of us know how to evaluate their lives?

00:35:16.700 And the, uh, conclusion that our societies had come up to, which partly came from, uh, um, a philosophical ethic, partly came from a political ethic, and very significantly came from a religious ethic.

00:35:29.700 Was to admire quiet suffering, to admire people who suffered without, um, expecting everybody to pay attention to them.

00:35:39.700 And this is actually crucial, is that we put an extremely high social status on heroism.

00:35:48.700 Which is the precise opposite of the thing that we have put the social status highest with today, which is somebody who can claim to have been a victim.

00:36:00.700 And if you say our societal, um, desire, our aspiration should be heroism, we celebrate heroes, we celebrate the heroic, then people will, uh, likely migrate to that direction themselves.

00:36:16.700 They may not have, um, especially heroic lives, they won't all be celebrated or anything like that.

00:36:21.700 But it means that you have a society which orients towards heroism.

00:36:26.700 And our society, because we most reward victims, now orients itself towards victimhood.

00:36:33.700 So that people in the luckiest society in history end up wishing to present themselves as if they're victims of something. 0.97

00:36:41.700 And I think it's pathetic. 0.86

00:36:43.700 I, uh, just sort of lampoon it, critique it and, and sit it out otherwise. 0.71

00:36:49.700 Um, but I think it's a massive shift and, uh, it's happened in our, in our lifetimes.

00:36:55.700 And, and by the way, if it's happened in our lifetimes, that means that it can go back in our lifetimes.

00:37:00.700 So I'm not too, um, optimistic about it.

00:37:04.700 It's a really good point you raise.

00:37:06.700 I remember also, you know, one of the lessons that my parents would teach was it wasn't always a good idea to put voice to thought.

00:37:12.700 So just because you were feeling down or you're having a bad day, you know, if all of a sudden you, you want to talk about it,

00:37:18.700 you want to hash it out, it makes you feel some, somehow it could be therapeutic, but it could also make you feel much worse.

00:37:23.700 And having this sort of group session where you're telling everyone all your, all your victimhoods, and you want to be able to speak your, your truth, whatever that means.

00:37:31.700 Uh, you know, it somehow degrades the entire level of, of discourse.

00:37:35.700 That is, I wanted to ask you, uh, I'll ask you sort of my last question and then we can move into the group, um, discussion.

00:37:41.700 Cause I know there's a lot of people who want to get questions to you, but you, both of your, your latest two books and your big books, uh, focus on the theme of, of identity.

00:37:50.700 And, and, and one of the things, you know, in, in sort of diverse pluralistic societies like Canada, the United States, to some extent, the United Kingdom,

00:37:58.700 you know, our, our identity, uh, is, is, is really based, uh, first and foremost, I mean, you know, everyone has their own individual identity based on gender and all those kinds of things.

00:38:09.700 But, but, but we were united in, in our identity as Canadians, you know, being a Canadian meant something.

00:38:15.700 It wasn't a specific definition because in Canada, we know we have French Catholics.

00:38:19.700 We have English Protestants.

00:38:20.700 We have, uh, you know, people from all different kinds of backgrounds.

00:38:23.700 So, so the, the identity wasn't based on these sort of intersectional, uh, grids, but it was really just, you know, we're Canadian.

00:38:31.700 We're here.

00:38:32.700 Uh, we, we built this society together and you know, it, it, it, it did mean something.

00:38:37.700 And, and, and now we have the breaking up of, of identities into intersectionality.

00:38:42.700 Do you think the original identity of, of being Canadian or being American or being, being a Brit, but not necessarily based on your, you know, your personal qualities, uh, like race and gender and those things.

00:38:53.700 Do you think there's value and we can ever get back to that, to being united based on a broader identity?

00:38:59.700 Or do you think now that we've come down this path where we chalked ourselves up into these little mini groups that, that going back to that, that national identity,

00:39:06.700 national identities is, is, is going to be sort of too far gone?

00:39:10.700 Well, uh, look at the last few weeks, whatever your views on it.

00:39:17.700 Do you honestly think in your lifetime you were going to hear Justin Trudeau announced the closing of Canada's borders?

00:39:24.700 Did you honestly think that you would see the EU, which at least was pretending not to be a protectionist block and protectionist within the block from country to country?

00:39:37.700 Would for instance, that we would see, um, the German and French governments ban the export of masks to Italy at the point in the crisis when Italy was hit at the worst.

00:39:51.700 And Germany had not yet reached anything like that.

00:39:55.700 The, within the EU, I can't stress this enough.

00:39:59.700 I mean, EU is the whole thing with it now is to pretend that national borders don't exist.

00:40:08.700 And that, that is why I, and many others, in fact, the majority of my country voted to leave the EU because we do believe in the nation state.

00:40:15.700 Um, as reasonable, the best way to organize and, and to cohere a society into an economy and much more.

00:40:23.700 Um, but you know, just look at that in recent weeks, uh, the, the upsurge, by the way, in Euro skepticism, EU skepticism in Italy.

00:40:32.700 You can, you can guess what the polls have shown in recent weeks since that.

00:40:37.700 But it's a demonstration of what some of us argued all along, which is that the nation state exists for us.

00:40:44.700 It's, it's, it's a natural thing.

00:40:46.700 It is to part, to an extent, a construct, of course, like everything.

00:40:49.700 But it's a perfectly reasonable and natural way to, um, to co, to cohere, uh, to organize and, and, and, and, and much more.

00:40:59.700 And what, what has happened again, this has happened in our lifetimes is, um, the presumption that national identity is bad because it leads to nationalism and nationalism leads to war.

00:41:13.700 It's a very simplistic, but in a way, a, a deep thought because it's, it, it's trying to contend with the 20th century.

00:41:25.700 It's doing so in an incredibly basic way.

00:41:27.700 It's taking a, a very easy to take lesson that only partly explains in very, only very, very partly explains what happened in the last century.

00:41:37.700 But it says, okay, nationalism leads to this, therefore.

00:41:41.700 And as I've pointed out many times, um, everything can go wrong.

00:41:46.700 Everything can go wrong.

00:41:48.700 Love, uh, caused the Trojan Wars. 0.96

00:41:52.700 Uh, we don't try to ban love or, or say that love should be prevented because it can lead to this awful war thing.

00:41:59.700 Um, everything can go wrong.

00:42:01.700 Now, the interesting thing is we actually know an awful lot now about where and when and how nationalism goes wrong.

00:42:08.700 You know, we, we know in Germany in the 20th century among other things, among many other things, but we've had a lot more knowledge of that from a much wider array of countries and places.

00:42:21.700 So we, we, we're pretty knowledgeable about where nationalism goes wrong.

00:42:25.700 But the idea that because it can go wrong, you should try to degrade national identity and give people these other identities is to make so many, uh, is to commit so many.

00:42:37.700 As I said, uh, I think in the strange death of Europe, before the wars of nation states racked Europe, before the Treaty of West failure, we had the wars of religion that racked Europe. 0.75

00:42:50.700 Um, what are you going to do?

00:42:53.700 What are you going to do?

00:42:54.700 Try to ban religion? 0.76

00:42:55.700 Uh, um, as I say, everything can go wrong. 0.98

00:42:58.700 I, I think that it's very clear that all the rights movements of the last century have all gone badly in the last phase where, like, peaking the manners of crap.

00:43:09.700 So they've gone wrong. 0.95

00:43:11.700 Women's rights starts off as a great argument and it ends up going to this horrible, you know, man hating. 1.00

00:43:19.700 You know, effectively human hating, uh, um, fourth wave phase, you know, gay rights. 0.99

00:43:26.700 I think starts off as a very good, very reasonable settings.

00:43:30.700 They just, just treat us like everybody else.

00:43:33.700 And then ends up in this last phase being this horrible and vindictive, you know, thing that backs up, you know, Tom, I think it was said, wasn't it?

00:43:41.700 Everything, every rights battle starts, you know, as something, you know, the cause and ends up, or it ends up as a business and finishes as a racket.

00:43:50.700 And, um, you know, that's, that's what all these things are.

00:43:54.700 So these things go wrong.

00:43:55.700 And, um, and one other point, if I may, on that, which is, I think it's very interesting that, you know, we live in an era where we search for meaning as much as ever.

00:44:07.700 But there are, um, the, the things we are being offered to find meaning in a very poor simulacrums of, of, of, of past, the same thing.

00:44:20.700 I think that inviting people to find meaning in their, in their chromosomes, or meaning in their sexual orientation, or meaning in their, the chance of what race you're born, what your skin color is, is a, is apart from anything else, a human demeaning idea.

00:44:43.700 Because it suggests that that sort of all we are, that all we are is our chromosomes or our sexual orientation or our skin color.

00:44:54.700 And I don't think that is the case.

00:44:56.700 I think it's in all of these cases, the least interesting thing about anybody.

00:45:01.700 And it's the place where you start from.

00:45:04.700 And, and so that's one of the many things we've got wrong.

00:45:10.700 But again, I, I'm, I'm optimistic on those ones.

00:45:13.700 There's an awful lot of things I, you know, I can pessimists away on, but I think these ones we'll see coming back.

00:45:21.700 And as I say, just in recent weeks, we've seen an example of that.

00:45:24.700 When the massive global pandemic emerged, it wasn't like the LGBT community went one way in response and heterosexuals went another. 0.89

00:45:35.700 It wasn't like the men and the women decided to do different things.

00:45:40.700 It isn't like within our countries, you know, the, the, the Korean community in Canada decided to do one thing.

00:45:49.700 And the, the, the, the Japanese community in Canada.

00:45:52.700 And I, of course not.

00:45:54.700 Canada acted as Canada, Britain acted as Britain.

00:45:58.700 That shows an awful lot of energy and meaning and therefore something right in the concept of the nation in the first place.

00:46:13.700 A really good point.

00:46:14.700 Sometimes, you know, when I, when I was reading madness of crowds, it kind of started to think, you know, these are all a, a, a, a result of, of just everyone's living such a great, you know, prosperous, peaceful life.

00:46:25.700 We, we've run out of, you know, that it's end of history to, to, to, to go back to Francis McCann's idea, but you know, there's nothing left to call about.

00:46:32.700 So let's just invent all of these different grievances and, and, and, you know, maybe things have changed now that we won't, we won't go back to the, we do have a couple of hands up that we're going to get to.

00:46:42.700 First, I did want to read an email question that I got from John Van Heike, who's a professor at the University of Lethbridge.

00:46:49.700 He says, Douglas, I enjoyed your books very much.

00:46:51.700 Your madness of crowd includes a fine analysis of how precariously defined each of the identities is, which raises questions as to how far identity politics can last.

00:47:01.700 Even so the rainbow coalition in quotes, it seems pretty enduring. What do you think accounts for that? Is it simply a matter of shared hatred for the bourgeoisie heteronormativity?

00:47:13.700 That's in quotes as well, or whatever you call it, or are the rainbow coalition members united more by shared hatred, or is it a shared friendship?

00:47:22.700 I think it's a, thank you for the question. I think it's shared hatred in a way, but it's a hatred that people are taught into.

00:47:31.700 You have to be taught into this stuff. I think it's one of the reasons why the modern universities in all of our countries have so much to answer for.

00:47:42.700 Uh, where, uh, people go away and learn new grievances to adopt and become, um, more stupid on a range of issues.

00:47:53.700 I mean, I'm, uh, there was a very fine example the other week when a young woman who turns out to be a, uh, teaches part-time at Oxford Brookes University and teaches in some very minor capacity at Oxford University. 0.75

00:48:06.700 Uh, wrote a piece, uh, I think published on the, um, left wing clickbait site, the Huffington Post saying, um, uh, that she hoped that her university, which she said was Oxford University, which I stress wasn't quite true.

00:48:21.700 Um, but she said, uh, that she hoped her university, Oxford University didn't find the vaccine for the COVID virus, because if it did, she knew it would be used as part of the nationalistic narrative of the Boris Johnson

00:48:36.700 government. You've really got to be educated into that kind of stupidity to, to wish that you don't find a global pandemic virus, um, uh, um, a cure for it. 0.95

00:48:51.700 Um, uh, because it would bring pride to your society and your country and anything to stop that. 0.99

00:48:59.700 Uh, I pointed out because not only is it ludicrous, but it's, it's a very unnatural response to that.

00:49:08.700 And it goes back to the point you just made before, which is that it's, it's a product of times being too good, that, that you don't have real grievances.

00:49:19.700 And so you've got to make some up. Uh, I, I think that'll be interesting thing to see by the way, in the months and years ahead.

00:49:26.700 Now that we've all had a little whiff, at least some people, a lot more of what actual grievances one might have.

00:49:34.700 Uh, we might have less grievances. Um, so yes, I mean, I think it's sort of something might reassert itself in that.

00:49:44.700 But, but I, I, uh, just a very quick thing. Yes. Within each identity group.

00:49:49.700 I point out this deeply unstable in itself and between each other, there's almost nothing they have in common.

00:49:55.700 Um, I mean, LGBT doesn't even get along. It's not even a thing. Uh, the L's and the G's don't get along. 1.00

00:50:04.700 They're very suspicious of the B's and they don't like the T's in a lot of cases. 0.90

00:50:07.700 And, uh, so, so it says, you know, I mean, you can do that on every single one of them, you know, ethnic minority communities.

00:50:13.700 Uh, what do they think about this? Oh yeah. What? There's one view that ethnic minority communities have. Wow.

00:50:23.700 You know, it's.

00:50:27.700 Yeah, it's certainly news to them. I even get resentful during election campaigns when they do discussions on women's issues,

00:50:33.700 because I never really seem to care about the supposed women's issues that I'm supposed to care about.

00:50:39.700 Uh, we have, uh, we have a question from Dr. Roy Eepin. Dr. Roy, let's promote you to a panelist and give you the floor.

00:50:47.700 The floor is yours, Dr. Roy.

00:50:49.700 Oh, hi, Mr. Murray. I, I, I met you in Montreal at the Mark Stein event.

00:50:54.700 Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Hi, nice to see you again.

00:50:58.700 Um, so I, I love all of what you write and I, I always want to thank you again for your defense of Sir Roger Scruton,

00:51:08.700 who has also been at one of our Civitas events, a wonderful, wonderful man, and was taken apart two years before he died for idiocy.

00:51:20.700 Um, is there any way that we can counteract this, this ability to destroy people for, for nothing?

00:51:29.700 Um, after years and years of, of, of great, of great books and thought.

00:51:35.700 Hmm. That's a very good question.

00:51:38.700 Um, I, I've thought about this a lot because yes, I'm, you probably know I was sort of much caught up in all of that.

00:51:45.700 Uh, this, this was, uh, for anyone who didn't follow it, this was, uh, just a year before his death in January.

00:51:50.700 Uh, Roger Scruton, uh, who I think it was fair to say was our greatest living philosopher.

00:51:55.700 Uh, certainly, um, the person I respected most in, in the field and who I think was most widely appreciated and indeed loved.

00:52:04.700 And who had the most extraordinary range.

00:52:06.700 I mean, it's, it's one important thing, isn't it?

00:52:08.700 That, that not only could he write on politics and political philosophy, but also on aesthetics, on architecture, on music, on all the things that make life worth living as well as the meaning of life itself and much more.

00:52:19.700 Um, uh, he was, uh, taken apart by, uh, an interviewer from the new Statesman magazine, the left wing magazine, which lied about him and, um, misquoted him and, and deliberately misquoted him.

00:52:34.700 And took remarks and put in remarks that he didn't make and much more as a total hatchet job.

00:52:40.700 And I exposed this fact.

00:52:42.700 And unfortunately in a demonstration of how degraded our press has become, the journalist in question remains in the employment of the new Statesman.

00:52:49.700 Um, now I, um, I thought there was something to learn from that whole episode.

00:52:56.700 Um, it's a very painful thing in a way for me because, uh, Roger was a very close friend and I, I knew that he hadn't said what this journalist said he had said.

00:53:08.700 I knew it because I'd known Roger for years.

00:53:10.700 And I just knew that, you know, he didn't go on anti Chinese people rants or, you know, he wasn't some sort of coarse bigot.

00:53:18.700 You know, he was incredibly refined, very, very thoughtful and caring person and, uh, um, and a brilliant, brilliant mind.

00:53:29.700 And I knew he hadn't said it.

00:53:31.700 And that, and that's why I immediately put up a defense of him and then found out the facts and exposed the fact that he hadn't said it.

00:53:37.700 But the, the worrying thing to me was that all of these conservative MPs among others immediately said, ah, you know, drop him.

00:53:45.700 He's toast.

00:53:46.700 He's a liability as if he, as if Sir Roger Scruton was, was so much excess baggage.

00:53:51.700 And, um, uh, the government in Britain, the conservative government of Theresa May, uh, which had appointed him to a non-paid position fired him within three or four hours of this hacks made up quotes coming out.

00:54:06.700 Uh, the thing, several things are interesting to me and I'll do them very quickly.

00:54:10.700 The first is, I think it's the first time my editor and colleague at the spectator Fraser Nelson made this point.

00:54:16.700 I think it's one of the first times that a price has been paid by people for joining a Twitter mob.

00:54:23.700 So several conservative MPs who joined the Twitter mob very early thinking that that would win them brownie points actually lost out as a result.

00:54:35.700 Uh, one, for instance, was somebody who, who aspires to be a leader of the conservative party one day or someday, and he just, he had no idea what he was doing.

00:54:43.700 He just was being weak.

00:54:45.700 And, uh, um, and he actually, he, his reputation among party members and others suffered enormously because of this, because people thought, no, that's, that's not right.

00:54:55.700 And, um, so that's the, that's one of the first things I think this, the largest lesson that I took from it is just a really crucial one, which I would like people.

00:55:07.700 Everywhere sort of bear in mind pass on.

00:55:11.700 It's a very simple one, which is just always stick up for your mates and particularly always stick up for your mates when you know they're being lied about.

00:55:19.700 And the really interesting thing in our time with this sort of Torquemada like, uh, a tendency that has existed in recent years.

00:55:28.700 The really interesting thing to me is not that people fallaciously make arguments against people in order to demonize them.

00:55:37.700 It's the fact that the people near the person being demonized don't stand up more.

00:55:43.700 I mean, that's the case with people like Brett Weinstein, uh, in, uh, the U S who I write about the madness of crowds, a professor at a college important in Oregon.

00:55:52.700 Who, um, you know, when he was a kid, he's a left wing, uh, Bernie supporting, uh, lifelong Democrat.

00:56:00.700 And when he was accused of racism, uh, for something that was absolutely not racist, uh, um, none of his colleagues of decades stood up for him publicly, not one.

00:56:15.700 And that's where the societal, you know, embarrassment, I think exists.

00:56:21.700 I think people should stand up for their friends, particularly when they know that they are being lied about and they say, no, you're not getting away with that.

00:56:29.700 We know that this is not a fair estimation of this person because we know them.

00:56:33.700 And I think we can all do that.

00:56:36.700 Thank you.

00:56:38.700 Thank you.

00:56:40.700 Thanks, Dr. Roy.

00:56:42.700 Douglas, there was a question emailed in about Sir Roger Scruton.

00:56:45.700 So I'll ask that as well, just while we're on the topic.

00:56:48.700 Um, this is from Jack Wright.

00:56:49.700 He says that Sir Scruton favorably reviewed the madness of crowds and was a friend of yours.

00:56:53.700 How would you have placed the sense of diversity you discuss in your books into his philosophy?

00:56:58.700 of conservatism.

00:57:02.700 Um, yes, Roger had a very long, a very thoughtful review of the madness of crowds.

00:57:07.700 Um, uh, I don't think there was very much water between us.

00:57:15.700 Um, uh, in fact, I spoke to Roger quite a lot when I was thinking about the madness of crowds.

00:57:22.700 He was, he was always one of the people that I, you know, a certain number of people.

00:57:25.700 I always sound out when I'm thinking about things and new ideas.

00:57:29.700 And, um, so I, he, we didn't have 100% alignment on some of these issues.

00:57:35.700 Um, but we had a fair amount, I thought, you know, the vast majority, of course.

00:57:41.700 Um, I think by the way, I don't be presumptuous about it.

00:57:45.700 I think that Roger's own thinking about some of these things had changed a little bit over the years.

00:57:50.700 Um, uh, Roger had a lovely phrase he used to use that he said that, that sometimes it seemed to him, the role of conservatives was to fight the next battle they knew they were going to lose.

00:58:06.700 And of course, one thing that comes from that is you leave behind like a sort of terrible flotsam, a load of things you did on all of the things you were fighting when they came round in the past.

00:58:21.700 And, and Roger was for many decades, uh, uh, you know, the foremost conservative figure on a whole range of things saying slow down or stop.

00:58:30.700 And, uh, um, and always did so in these as a friend, a mutual friend, as a philosopher said, used to do so in pieces, particularly when he was writing in the times of London, the 1980s pieces that were effectively incredibly tightly packed ideological pipe bombs.

00:58:47.700 Uh, uh, uh, every sentence was, was, was, would, would, would attack a fundamental presumption of the, uh, the liberal society of the kind that, that, that, that Britain and other countries have become.

00:59:00.700 Um, so yes, uh, he, uh, he was also, I mean, he was, he was great friends with a number of the people who, and was enormously influenced by and influenced a number of major figures who've been on the front lines of each of these issues.

00:59:15.700 I mean, Christina Hoff Summers, for instance, remarkable, uh, academic writer.

00:59:20.700 Now at the American enterprises, she was a long, long friend of Rogers and her thinking on, on feminism as much influenced by him and he was influenced by her.

00:59:28.700 So it's a huge, huge presence and a huge loss.

00:59:31.700 Great.

00:59:33.700 Yeah.

00:59:34.700 I mean, my personal thoughts on it is it seems that there's, there's a new movement.

00:59:37.700 I know, um, Orrin Cass wrote a book called, um, the once and future worker and they launched a movement called the American compass.

00:59:44.700 And the idea is that relying on the sort of libertarian laissez faire economic structure is limited and that we need to present something more, um, for conservatism.

00:59:54.700 And I think that sort of goes in line with Sir Roger Scruton's idea that, that, that there needs to be more to conservatism as opposed to just free markets.

01:00:03.700 Yes.

01:00:04.700 But that's a, it's a very, very important point.

01:00:06.700 And, and there are more people now catching on to this.

01:00:09.700 Um, and I think that, uh, Roger was not, not alone, but one of very few people in recent decades making this, this point from the right.

01:00:21.700 I think that, yes, my observation is, has been that in recent decades in particular, young people who've basically been of the right, say they're libertarian because they sort of want to get away with it somehow.

01:00:33.700 But that it has seeped into being the case that, um, that, that, that the only thing conservatives know how to argue is the economy, you know?

01:00:45.700 And, and that's very dangerous among other things, because when the economy goes wrong, conservative government, whether that government's fault or not, um, you know, you look like the one thing people could trust you with, you can't be trusted with either.

01:01:00.700 And I do think that one of the great challenges for the political right, uh, particularly after Sputin's passing and others is, is, is to keep hope and develop thinking on all of these things.

01:01:13.700 It, it seems appalling to me that, for instance, a conservative government would, you know, would just wave through the destruction of the countryside for economic reasons.

01:01:26.700 Uh, or allow the building of incredibly hideous buildings in the center of your cities.

01:01:32.700 Um, you know, and, and, and say, Oh, well, it brings in money.

01:01:36.700 Uh, that, that doesn't seem to me a conservative argument.

01:01:39.700 It's a very narrow, uh, type of free marketeer argument, but anyhow, but yes, this is, it's a very important thing to consider.

01:01:47.700 Great. Uh, let's go to some of these, uh, hands that are up. Uh, let's go to page Monroe. You have a question. So we'll promote you up to panelists and page. The, uh, floor is yours.

01:02:01.700 Um, hi Douglas. Thank you very much for your participation this morning.

01:02:07.700 Um, I just wondered, so, um, I'm sure you're aware that Dr. Jordan Peterson has sort of been thrown into the fire because of his recent health and mental health struggles.

01:02:18.700 Um, I just wondered what you would say to all of these rather disgusting people on Twitter who say that, you know, oh, he's finally got what he deserves, um, because of all of his comments.

01:02:30.700 Uh, it's a very good question page. I, I, um, I, I, I know Jordan, uh, um, a bit, I'm very proud to call him a friend and, uh, um, yeah, I mean, they, you know, he and his family have had a hell of a year.

01:02:47.700 And, uh, my view, my view is that, um, my other things, Jordan carried an awful lot of burden in the last few years and he carried it with exceptional grace.

01:02:59.700 And fortitude and courage. And what I'm really thinking of is the fact that again, it's like, you go back to Dr. Roy's, uh, comment is, is that in question is that, um, we are in this situation.

01:03:14.700 In our societies where things that majorities, I would argue of people in our societies know to be true are either said by nobody or are said by one or two people who as a result become the target of a very vociferous and noisy minority.

01:03:33.700 And nobody, uh, has that been the case with more in recent years and with, uh, Jordan.

01:03:40.700 Um, I thought a lot, um, throughout that period that he was carrying an incredible burden in, in the fact that, I mean, let me give you one example is that if, if you are known to be a truth teller.

01:03:55.700 On one issue, you will be asked about other issues and you'll develop a truth telling tendency in those as well.

01:04:03.700 Um, and all your opponents need is for you to slip up once.

01:04:08.700 For you to once say the wrong word or express the wrong wording, even, or, I don't know, be human in a way like lose your temper or tell someone to shut up or, you know, things that we're all fallible humans.

01:04:26.700 We all do.

01:04:27.700 We can all do.

01:04:28.700 Um, and if you're in the position that Jordan was in, he was, he was, they were waiting for him to slip up.

01:04:37.700 At any moment.

01:04:39.700 And he never did because he isn't the person they want to portray him as, you know, uh, the people who like to present him as if he is this sort of fantasy figure of their imaginations who this sort of misogynistic, you know, um, homophobic, racist, blah, blah, blah.

01:04:56.700 You know, all of the usual, uh, curse, uh, terms, the magic spell terms.

01:05:02.700 Um, it just, he isn't that, and they, and they just, they tried everything and they, they, they lied about him and they misrepresented him just like they did with Roger.

01:05:11.700 And they pretended he said things he hadn't said.

01:05:14.700 And, um, and they pretended that when they couldn't get him on that, they did that trick that they do now, which is say, ah, he may not have used the word, but he, he did a dog whistle.

01:05:24.700 Yeah, he's a whistle for white supremacy or something.

01:05:27.700 Exactly. 0.99

01:05:28.700 I mean, I love this one because of course, um, if, if you hear the whistle, you're the dog.

01:05:34.700 Um, there are, there aren't people gifted to interpret words on behalf of the dog community or whatever.

01:05:44.700 I mean, it's, it's, it's an extraordinarily presumptuous thing.

01:05:48.700 I mean, just think about it for a second.

01:05:49.700 These are people who pretend that although people don't use words or phrases that they want to accuse them of, the fact they haven't used those words or phrases is evidence that they're using them secretly at a special sonar level.

01:06:07.700 Yes.

01:06:08.700 And, and they couldn't even get him on that because again, it's because that's not him.

01:06:14.700 That's not the case.

01:06:15.700 So he carried an incredible burden.

01:06:18.700 I think he's an extraordinary, extraordinary man.

01:06:22.700 And, um, I have seen firsthand from doing events with him and, you know, and meeting people and speaking with people afterwards.

01:06:31.700 I've seen firsthand what an impact he's had on so many lives, particularly the lives of young people.

01:06:36.700 And of, of every background and, you know, and much more.

01:06:41.700 Um, and he has brought an enormous amount of purpose and meaning to a lot of people's lives in a way.

01:06:48.700 I think it's unparalleled actually.

01:06:50.700 I can't think of another public intellectual who's, who's had a similar impact.

01:06:55.700 Um, and it's a society.

01:07:00.700 I said this at a while ago about him in a piece trying to stand up for him when the mob was coming for him.

01:07:05.700 I said, a society that was serious would say, even if it opposed what he said, would say, there must be something in this because thousands of young people are turning out to hear this person speak.

01:07:19.700 So even if we don't agree with his conclusions, even if we don't agree with the landscape he's laid out as being an accurate, you know, reflection of our society.

01:07:28.700 There must be something he's touching, which it would be worth finding out about and possibly addressing ourselves.

01:07:36.700 And I'm so struck that Jordan's critics have almost never done that.

01:07:42.700 They've almost never done that.

01:07:44.700 And, you know, I, uh, anyhow, I just wish him well, I, we could do with him back and up and well.

01:07:51.700 And, but he must do so as when he can.

01:07:54.700 And, and, you know, but, but he's done an incredible amount and, uh, and just all, all our thoughts, I think are with him and his family.

01:08:04.700 Thank you very much.

01:08:06.700 Thank you.

01:08:07.700 Thank you.

01:08:08.700 Thank you, Peja.

01:08:09.700 It was a great question.

01:08:10.700 And I'm going to go to Dr. Scott Mason next, cause I think his topic, his question is related to the conversation that we're on right now.

01:08:16.700 So we'll promote Dr. Mason to the floor and the floor is yours.

01:08:21.700 So I, I want, I was very intrigued by what you said.

01:08:24.700 Thank you very much.

01:08:25.700 Douglas.

01:08:26.700 And, um, I wanted to engage on, on various things, but the last thing that you mentioned about.

01:08:32.700 So Roger Scruton and Tom Flanna getting, getting defenestrated by their own conservative parties.

01:08:38.700 Uh, this is something that we've seen happen to conservative figures repeatedly over the years.

01:08:43.700 Uh, not that they've done anything wrong, but simply that they were targeted for removal because of something that they allegedly said and may not even have said, but they were, you mentioned there was a lack of solidarity or, um, or principle or, um, or

01:09:01.700 courage on behalf of their own, uh, contemporaries.

01:09:04.700 And, and even when they were standard bearers like this men, the same thing would apply to, uh, uh, Jordan Peterson that you just mentioned as well.

01:09:12.700 My question is, is the reason why that is that the, even those that call themselves conservatives, um, aren't really conservatives in anything other than what you just said, economic issues, but they don't really have a coherent philosophy or a view of what human nature actually is.

01:09:30.700 And that effectively, that means that they agree with the political left, that human nature is something that we construct.

01:09:38.700 And so there is no fundamental principle that underlies anything for that matter.

01:09:42.700 There's nothing that they regard as self-evident and therefore there's nothing that can be proved.

01:09:47.700 So the charge is enough to bring somebody down.

01:09:50.700 There's nothing to defend anymore.

01:09:52.700 Yeah.

01:09:53.700 Yeah.

01:09:54.700 That's a very good point.

01:09:55.700 Um, I think, I think, I, I, I do think that there are fundamental misunderstandings, including the one you just, you just mentioned of the, of an understanding of human nature or misunderstanding of human nature.

01:10:09.700 Uh, which I think, yes, has been shared by many people on the right, as well as the left.

01:10:14.700 I mean, I'm amazed by the number of presumptions that I find people who call themselves conservatives and often elected to be conservatives actually have.

01:10:23.700 Um, including one is that, that, I mean, no conservative should believe such as, you know, the, the, the possibility of, um, well, among other things, the idea that the idea that we're better than our ancestors because we live after.

01:10:38.700 You know, I mean, I mean, uh, it's a sort of very basic presumption, uh, which you, you routinely find people who, who identify as being on the right holder.

01:10:49.700 Um, and, uh, perfect ability and many other things.

01:10:52.700 I think though, if I can say that it might be that it's a tactical issue that causes this.

01:10:58.700 And let me just explain very briefly, if I may, what I, what I mean by this.

01:11:02.700 I think it's something tactical because the perception of somebody on the right airs is that they've gone into a totally unacceptable and reprehensible place.

01:11:17.700 Whereas somebody on the left who airs is still of the left.

01:11:24.700 Now, what I mean by this is, is, is that I, I, I once said this in a conversation with Jordan, um, that, that I, I think it's because of an understanding of politics, which we've been by pretty much since the forties is, um, this, this is a political center.

01:11:43.700 And this is the right, and this is the left, this is the political center.

01:11:47.700 You can be one degree here.

01:11:49.700 So you can be for like lower taxes and you're, you're there.

01:11:52.700 You could be, you know, you could be a sort of free marketeer, economic, you know, conservatism, but there is fascism.

01:12:01.700 Yeah.

01:12:02.700 Or at least let me put it there, this, you go there, there, and then you go down, you're, you're a fascism.

01:12:08.700 And if that's still a political center and you're of the political left, you go to like slightly higher taxes, higher welfare spending, appropriation of wealth, appropriation of property.

01:12:20.700 They sort of, it goes along all the way and you never get to the gulag.

01:12:25.700 Hmm.

01:12:26.700 And I find this to be one of the most interesting, um, causes of the, the thing that has happened in all of our lifetimes of there being this vertiginous, there being a perception of a vertiginous fall off to the right.

01:12:43.700 It's why, I mean, it's why so many right wing politicians describe themselves as center right.

01:12:50.700 Hmm.

01:12:51.700 Because they say center right in order to give the sort of signal that they're not right wing because right wing is basically Hitler and they don't want to be Hitler.

01:12:59.700 And so, so they're center right.

01:13:02.700 And the left, I mean, you know, it's not like, they don't audition to be center left.

01:13:07.700 There are people who are center left, obviously, but the point is, is not just that the form of solidarity exists on the political left, but that there isn't a perception that, that it falls off in this manner.

01:13:20.700 And so when somebody on the left says something, I know, well, for instance, Diane Abbott, who's just only just left the shadow cabinet here, who's a prominent Labour politician in the UK,

01:13:30.700 you know, said some years ago that, you know, the chairman Mao was one of her political heroes.

01:13:36.700 And when asked why she sort of said, well, he didn't, you know, enormous amount for Chinese agriculture or something.

01:13:43.700 I mean, it was just staggering.

01:13:45.700 Now, if somebody said, if somebody interviewed in Britain and, and I know a Conservative Party politician said, who's your political hero?

01:13:53.700 And said, well, I've always been rather fond of Mussolini, you know, and what do you mean?

01:14:00.700 And, you know, well, he got the trains running on time.

01:14:02.700 Well, you know, General Franco is my sort of guy.

01:14:04.700 Why?

01:14:05.700 Oh, he kept order in Spain, you know, or something like that.

01:14:08.700 You sort of, you'd say it's over for you.

01:14:11.700 It's over.

01:14:12.700 My point is, there is this strange lack of synchronicity between the political sides.

01:14:21.700 And I think that it causes this follow on effect.

01:14:25.700 And I've seen this with various journalists and writers over the years who have, you know, strayed into the dangerous, you know, topics of it.

01:14:33.700 But the moment that they put one foot wrong.

01:14:36.700 I mean, my colleague at The Spectator, Toby Young, was unbelievably liable for turning up to a conference,

01:14:44.700 which was described by the political left as being a eugenicist conference.

01:14:48.700 And because he sat at the back of a conference, which had to do with IQ and things like that, all very dangerous stuff.

01:14:55.700 But it was, you know, at a university.

01:14:57.700 He sat at the back of the room to write about the conference.

01:15:00.700 And from being there was it was torn to shreds in the media and elsewhere. 0.91

01:15:06.700 And everyone, you know, got away with libeling him and saying Toby Young's clearly eugenicist and wants to kill the poor. 0.95

01:15:11.700 And, you know, and all this sort of nonsense.

01:15:14.700 But the point is, is what's interesting is people run away because they they just think if you are again, that's the center.

01:15:21.700 If and I'm here, if you just go there, I've got to run.

01:15:25.700 I've got to get out of here.

01:15:27.700 Or I'm adjacent to use one of the favorite phrases of the time in terms of the era.

01:15:32.700 I'm adjacent to somebody who's gone into reprehensible territory.

01:15:36.700 And I find it a fascinating thing this.

01:15:39.700 But again, is it is it not because they fear that.

01:15:42.700 So when they do get mobbed like that, it's is it not because for the very reason that you just said,

01:15:47.700 they feel like they are not standing on any firm, solid, broad based ground like the law of human nature, like natural law, those sorts of things.

01:15:57.700 They don't believe that that is there.

01:15:59.700 They believe that they're just on the spectrum, the continuum of the left.

01:16:03.700 And they just happen to be on the center of that a little bit further to the right.

01:16:06.700 And there is a cliff.

01:16:08.700 And that's what they themselves believe.

01:16:10.700 You're absolutely right.

01:16:11.700 This is what I've just been describing is a crowd tactic.

01:16:15.700 Yeah, I mean, it's mobbing.

01:16:17.700 That's a mob.

01:16:18.700 And it's a self preservation tactic in the midst of the mobbing.

01:16:22.700 But as is at the point, it goes to what you just what the point you just made is, is that.

01:16:27.700 Yes, because if you have a print, if you have first principles, it doesn't matter if the mob comes for you.

01:16:34.700 Right.

01:16:35.700 In fact, it doesn't matter if the mob comes to the person beside you.

01:16:38.700 And you're absolutely right that this, and this is what we saw in the Scruton Affairs, what we've seen in many cases, it is, it is a lack of first principles that would make somebody stand firm.

01:16:53.700 Right.

01:16:54.700 And if you don't have that, then they just stampede like any zebra.

01:17:00.700 Right.

01:17:01.700 Thank you.

01:17:02.700 Thank you.

01:17:03.700 Great.

01:17:04.700 Thanks for that question.

01:17:05.700 And let's go next to Kara Johnson, because I think her question is related.

01:17:09.700 And then after that, we'll get to Rahim Mohammed.

01:17:11.700 So hang tight.

01:17:12.700 If you have your hand up, we're going to get to everyone.

01:17:14.700 But let's give the floor to Kara. 1.00

01:17:16.700 Hi, thanks for being with us.

01:17:21.700 It's really nice to meet you.

01:17:23.700 I'm glad to meet you.

01:17:24.700 I've not read a ton of your work, but I have seen, seen a fair amount of it over time.

01:17:30.700 But I saw you on a podcast last fall.

01:17:33.700 And you, what I was most impressed about, in the context of identity politics and freedom of speech, was your championing of truth, that truth matters, and how much we suffer when we don't uphold the truth.

01:17:47.700 But what I didn't hear from you was a definition of truth.

01:17:50.700 So I would be very grateful if you could provide your context for speaking about the truth.

01:17:56.700 That's a nice, easy one.

01:17:58.700 Sorry.

01:17:59.700 This is for the fact.

01:18:01.700 Well, I mean, definitionally, I mean, it's obviously the absence of error.

01:18:08.700 I mean, now, of course, we get on to what is error.

01:18:12.700 Um, various things.

01:18:16.700 The first is, if it's to do with simply the observation of the world around us, we can tell what is true.

01:18:30.700 At the very least, we can tell what is true in all of the experience we have, and all the knowledge we have.

01:18:37.700 Um, uh, we know that this color has always been agreed on to be this color.

01:18:43.700 And this other color has always been agreed not to be that color.

01:18:47.700 Um, uh, we know in science, uh, is, is obviously the easiest one.

01:18:54.700 Um, uh, you know, there, there, there are things we know to be the case.

01:18:59.700 And when somebody claims them not to be the case, uh, we can notice it.

01:19:07.700 Now, of course, outside of the sciences, it becomes harder.

01:19:11.700 There's been experiential terrain among other things, but let's just stick with science for a moment.

01:19:17.700 I mean, look at the way in which, but by the way, let me, can I just answer this by way of a quick diversion on this?

01:19:24.700 Which is one of the reasons why I ended up in matters of perhaps writing the last transition was not only, I think is very fascinating and hadn't been looked at properly and thoroughly.

01:19:36.700 And, you know, with, I think the sort of understanding of what is actually maybe going, but what the questions are that it's necessary to ask and think about.

01:19:44.700 One of the reasons I became interested in this issue, which is a very fringe issue.

01:19:48.700 And it doesn't really have any impact on my life.

01:19:50.700 Uh, was that I noticed the number of people who were scientists, who was, who, who I noticed, couldn't do what was being asked of them.

01:20:00.700 And then people I knew, particularly at universities who were scientists saying to me in private, I can't do this.

01:20:08.700 And when you dug down and literally see what it was, what you found.

01:20:13.700 And somebody said this to me openly said, said, Douglas, for the first time in my life, I'm being asked not to use the scientific method by my university.

01:20:23.700 I can't do it.

01:20:25.700 I can't do it.

01:20:26.700 Now that is very interesting, of course, because, because, and I think that is, that was what sort of got me interested in the transfer.

01:20:33.700 Wow.

01:20:34.700 And these are people with a very specific idea of what is true and what is not, within their field, I should say, within their terrain.

01:20:46.700 Um, then you see how much easier it is to befuddle people and confuse people when it's in the much more, um, fluid nature of the non-scientific world.

01:21:00.700 And so that's, that's, uh, it's not a total answer to your question.

01:21:05.700 Uh, I would have to be here for days if we got to the, the fundamental, but I think that it's obviously, you know, the, the question of truth is one of the earliest.

01:21:15.700 And most complex philosophical questions.

01:21:18.700 Um, in a, in, in a way, sometimes when I say, when I say, um, the truth, of course, I, I mean, sometimes, um, it's a shorthand for the, what maybe it's a better way of saying is the pursuit of truth.

01:21:34.700 Um, in that, in the, the, what troubles me about a whole range of things in our societies.

01:21:44.700 Is not that I have the truth and other people do not, but I think that we should be searching for the truth.

01:21:53.700 Searching for truth and certainly not immersing ourselves in error, cutting away error wherever we can in order to stand a better chance of getting to that which is true.

01:22:03.700 And I think again, it's one of the things that has changed somewhat in our lifetime that, that isn't seen as the, the pursuit of truth is not be, is not seen currently in our societies as a, as a thing with the nobility.

01:22:20.700 It should be endowed with.

01:22:22.700 And I think that there are various reasons why that's the case.

01:22:25.700 And one is that we have slipped for a long time into this very relativistic idea that that's because basically there isn't any such thing as truth in any realm.

01:22:36.700 And that's why, and, and this, this, I mean, I know people sometimes think that people interested in ideas belabor the significance of ideas, but they do have this trickle down effect.

01:22:48.700 And in our society, most commonly, this is heard in the phrase, my truth.

01:22:55.700 I'm simply living my truth.

01:22:58.700 Oh, I see.

01:22:59.700 You have your truth.

01:23:00.700 I have my truth.

01:23:01.700 You say tomato.

01:23:02.700 I say tomato.

01:23:03.700 And that's a fascinating thing because it is the most popular version of, there is no such thing as true or untrue.

01:23:14.700 There is simply what one feels oneself.

01:23:17.700 So in a way, it's just anything that's opposed to that presumption.

01:23:22.700 Thank you.

01:23:25.700 I, I, I do think that was the heart of my question was objective truth or subjective truth.

01:23:30.700 And, and where, you know, how do we really the need for some kind of a basis to conduct dialogue.

01:23:37.700 So I think what you, what you covered was helpful.

01:23:39.700 Thank you.

01:23:40.700 All right.

01:23:41.700 Thank you.

01:23:42.700 Great.

01:23:43.700 Thanks for the question, Cara.

01:23:44.700 And let's move on to Raheem Muhammad.

01:23:47.700 Raheem, let's promote you to panelists.

01:23:49.700 And the floor is yours.

01:23:53.700 Hello, Candace.

01:23:54.700 Hello.

01:23:55.700 Hello, Douglas.

01:23:56.700 My name is Raheem Muhammad.

01:23:57.700 Hello.

01:23:58.700 I am a professor of politics and international studies at Center College in Danville, Kentucky.

01:24:03.700 Um, so I'm coming to you too on what should have been Derby day.

01:24:06.700 Oh, wow.

01:24:07.700 Got my, uh, my bourbon in hand.

01:24:08.700 So I appreciate y'all at least making it today something to celebrate.

01:24:13.700 Um, I would much rather have the Derby, but, um, this is a fine consolation surprise for me.

01:24:19.700 Um, so the question I'm going to ask, it's been touched upon in your response to Dr. Roy,

01:24:24.700 um, as well as to Paige in terms of the whole Jordan Peterson affair.

01:24:28.700 Um, but I wanted to ask you more directly.

01:24:30.700 So you identify the origin point of our kind of current and ongoing culture of victimhood

01:24:36.700 and grievance claiming as coming prior to the advent of social media and social media platforms.

01:24:42.700 But how has this culture has been, how has this culture been accelerated?

01:24:46.700 Um, given the kind of reward system that's embedded in social media platforms like Twitter

01:24:52.700 and like Facebook and the types of behaviors that tend to get rewarded with things like

01:24:57.700 likes and retweets and blue check marks and to use kind of a Kentucky and expression.

01:25:03.700 Now that that force is out of the barn.

01:25:05.700 Is there anything we can do about it to get it back in?

01:25:08.700 That's such a good question.

01:25:11.700 Um, I think there is, and I'd start by mentioning the fact that I know individuals

01:25:17.700 and I think probably you and other people have probably either known people

01:25:22.700 or have seen people who this has happened with, who have gone into that world

01:25:27.700 and have managed to come out of it.

01:25:30.700 What I mean is people who have, who have entered and engaged in the behavior

01:25:37.700 that is rewarded in our time and have decided that it isn't something they want to engage in any longer.

01:25:43.700 So for instance, the most obvious one is, um, people who used to, used to find meaning in joining online mobs.

01:25:53.700 You know, at least one a day, you know, you click on the internet.

01:25:57.700 Who has, who has aired and strayed today?

01:25:59.700 Uh, let's beat them up before breakfast to demonstrate. 0.99

01:26:03.700 I'm a good person.

01:26:04.700 And hopefully by lunch they'll have lost their job.

01:26:06.700 And by dinner time, I can crow about my role in it and so on.

01:26:10.700 Um, there's been some very interesting pieces on this.

01:26:14.700 Quillette, you know, I'm sure maybe you'll hear it.

01:26:17.700 It's running at least two pieces I've read by people who've said, this is what I used to do.

01:26:24.700 And I just realized this was, I was not being a good person or a nice person.

01:26:31.700 I was cloaking myself in the, you know, in the cloak of righteousness, but, um, I was this vengeful online person finding meaning in this, in this route.

01:26:44.700 I know people and I've spoken to people myself who, who, who've done something similar.

01:26:49.700 And I think there are, I think there is a learning curve that, you know, intelligent people, thoughtful people can go through on this,

01:26:59.700 which is to, to, to do that for a bit and then rise.

01:27:02.700 That doesn't seem to give them the meaning they actually are after in life.

01:27:07.700 It gives them a version of something like meaning, but it's more like a hobby really.

01:27:12.700 Um, and then they see, of course, that it comes for them or somebody they know that the mob comes for somebody who's in the most common one is a mob comes for somebody who says something that they thought quite recently.

01:27:26.700 Um, that's a big learning moment because then you rise, it could have come for you.

01:27:32.700 And then you wonder whether or not you want to be engaged in this.

01:27:35.700 But the whole thing starts from this, this, uh, you rightly identified the advent of technology as being a, um, um, the, the, uh, aggravating factor in this.

01:27:48.700 And I think that's something that I spent some time in Silicon Valley when researching the madness of crowds to try to find out more and understand more about the, the way in which the algorithms work and much more at various companies.

01:28:01.700 And I do think that the single thing you remember on social media platforms is, uh, that somebody who worked at them once said that these are companies set up to profit by millions of people for free correcting other people's behavior.

01:28:22.700 And once people work out and my experience, by the way, also smarter, younger people, I'm thinking people after, after millennials, they've worked this out or the smarter ones have worked this out.

01:28:40.700 That what they have been being encouraged to be is to basically work for free for Twitter or whichever platform.

01:28:53.700 And they've, they've worked that out that they don't see the money from it.

01:28:57.700 Their friends don't see the money from it.

01:28:59.700 The target doesn't see the money from it.

01:29:01.700 Certainly.

01:29:02.700 It's something that doesn't enrich them in the, in the technical sense.

01:29:08.700 That it definitely can impoverish them if it goes wrong for them.

01:29:12.700 But then in the wider sense of enrichment, it doesn't bring what they thought it would.

01:29:19.700 So my hope is that that, that we are in the era where that lesson is being learned too slowly, admittedly.

01:29:30.700 But, you know, as we all know, it took decades to, for the actual consequences of Gutenberg to be felt.

01:29:41.700 And we are in the earliest stages of this, this, and by the way, one other thing on that, which is, we are in the, one of the ones I think about the most, which is, is not quite related to your question, but it just interests me.

01:29:55.700 And is that we are in the earliest stages of discovering what it means when you erase the spheres of private language from the sphere of public language.

01:30:04.700 And we don't know what that means.

01:30:07.700 We don't know what it means when anything that anyone says could be known to the one person they're speaking to, or could be made known to the entire world.

01:30:16.700 It's one of the most enormous changes in communication since we got up off our hind legs.

01:30:23.700 And it's gone on in our lifetimes.

01:30:27.700 And we've not noticed it particularly, but we have been living through it.

01:30:31.700 And that's why I'm very sympathetic to young people growing up in this, because it's just hugely difficult.

01:30:38.700 If you didn't know and haven't inherited the knowledge of how we used to communicate and talk before all this.

01:30:44.700 Great.

01:30:45.700 Rahim, did you have a follow up or did that?

01:30:47.700 No, thank you so much for answering my question.

01:30:48.700 Thank you.

01:30:49.700 And thank you so much for giving me some joy on Derby Day.

01:30:50.700 I appreciate it.

01:30:51.700 Well, enjoy the bourbon.

01:30:52.700 All right.

01:30:53.700 Thanks Rahim.

01:30:54.700 All right.

01:30:55.700 Let's go to our next question, which will come from Perry Foster.

01:30:56.700 And then after that, we'll do a question from Estevan.

01:30:57.700 So Perry first, please.

01:30:58.700 And you're up Perry.

01:30:59.700 The floor is yours.

01:31:00.700 All right.

01:31:01.700 All right.

01:31:02.700 Let's go to our next question, which will come from Perry Foster.

01:31:05.700 And then after that, we'll do a question from Estevan.

01:31:08.700 So Perry first, please.

01:31:11.700 And you're up Perry.

01:31:12.700 The floor is yours.

01:31:13.700 Hi, Douglas.

01:31:14.700 Hi.

01:31:15.700 Thanks for speaking to us today.

01:31:18.700 I have a question regarding historical revisionism.

01:31:22.700 And in Canada, we seem to be going through a paroxysm about this.

01:31:25.700 Maybe that's happening in all the Western countries.

01:31:28.700 Prime ministers being removed from money, textbooks being rewritten.

01:31:33.700 And, you know, if you are in the know, you know, these textbooks are not telling the truth.

01:31:38.700 So it's not important.

01:31:39.700 No, since we have a couple of popular things.

01:31:41.700 You look up to this arc.

01:31:43.700 It's not important to suit us.

01:31:44.700 Yes.

01:31:45.700 So I think we just want to get over a period of time.

01:31:47.700 We just couldn't avoid this ever near print country. 0.86

01:31:48.700 But that kind of thing.

01:31:49.700 I think, Dr.

01:31:50.520 We're지가 Miles, as you know, tôi's one of the have not seen it in either

01:31:51.700 peaceful as the day, because today is my full time.

01:31:52.700 And in Westbrook, we just want to be told you.

01:31:53.700 And this is Lore survey, I've been determined in Western countries with other

01:31:55.660 media channels.

01:31:56.700 have enough knowledge to know that this false history is not true how can we fight this

01:32:02.420 that's a it's a tricky the last part of that is especially tricky this is an incredibly

01:32:08.360 important issue um i wrote about a bit of this in strange death of europe uh um in relation to

01:32:15.920 the culture of actually what we're just written called the culture of self-abnegation um uh but

01:32:23.060 it has a it has the widest imaginable uh um version in something which i've observed has been

01:32:30.580 has been um commonly there's there's an absolutely simultaneous thing that has occurred in canada

01:32:40.940 america and australia in particular uh and it happened in the last couple of decades australia

01:32:49.200 is one i'm most interested in a way because it's the country whose self-image shifted most swiftly

01:32:55.160 yes but it's the same thing that it seems to me has happened in canada and certainly america to

01:33:02.000 a similar extent and that is in the australian version i mean maybe i can get away with talking

01:33:07.380 about australia i don't want to talk about canada canadians i'm caught out in serious error very early

01:33:12.300 on but uh but you know in australia it's basically the shift from the happy the lucky country

01:33:19.580 to a country mired in original sin

01:33:24.760 and i one of the things i said in the strange death of europe about this and i you know sorry day

01:33:33.240 and uh in australia and uh and the the you know the apologies historic apologies is

01:33:39.300 there's there's an awful lot of presumption that goes along in this i mean the first thing is a

01:33:44.760 lot of it is being is clearly historically wrong and inaccurate that's been pumped around but

01:33:52.220 there's the the the question seems interesting to me is the underlying motive what is the underlying

01:33:57.980 motive for this it again it goes slightly back to the point i made about the young lady at oxford

01:34:03.760 who wanted her university not to find the inoculation for the virus um it it seems to me

01:34:11.240 very understandable that people would have an instinctive love of their country or the society

01:34:16.980 they're brought up in even if actually even even if they're brought up in a society that's not that

01:34:21.220 pleasant i mean even north koreans i've only been there once but i think north koreans sort of

01:34:25.560 have some you know feeling of pride in in north korea maybe a very large amount far too much um but

01:34:32.760 a natural feeling of your society being sort of good is is common i think very common and and and

01:34:41.260 as i say is natural it seems to me rather unnatural to want your society to be worse than it has been

01:34:48.320 exactly that that seems to me something you need to be taught into and um i think there's a reason

01:34:57.520 for this uh um i think that there is a particular there is a particular desire to show um societies which

01:35:09.000 and again i tread on very careful terrain here but societies which are seen to be the product of the

01:35:15.320 the daughter societies societies of europe have to be presented in this especially negative light

01:35:23.460 and i say that because you know there are so many every country in in the world has some history of

01:35:36.700 or much history of conquest of persecution of wiping outs of people of of accidents that nobody

01:35:48.400 could have known or expected which are then put down to gross you know bigotry of some kind of that

01:35:56.140 that um diseases spread that no one knew they had and uh and there were no cures for and and much more

01:36:05.000 this is this is this is history this is this is the stuff that history is made of and um i do think that

01:36:13.800 there has been a concerted effort to show that canada america australia in particular and it actually

01:36:20.200 interesting enough in recent decades israel which the critique of israel is very often that is sort of

01:36:25.400 you know well it also gets critiqued both in europe and the wider west and also in the middle east as being a sort of european

01:36:32.600 um implant another child of this awful europe and um i i think it's a self-lacerating thing i think it's 0.74

01:36:42.360 i think it is directed by some people i think it's very clearly um intended by some people simply to

01:36:51.060 fundamentally alter the societies in question um but my my beef with it is is not just where it's a

01:36:59.320 historical but where it's just deeply unfair i mean my my view is that you know we have this um

01:37:07.240 we have this row that goes on every now and then in the uk about winston churchill

01:37:12.520 oh and it's one that interests me enormously because i often wonder why are you doing it

01:37:18.940 is the question i always have why would you be doing this and they said so the the churchill critics

01:37:24.320 we had one in the former shadow chancellor john mcdonald who was asked what he thought of winston

01:37:29.280 churchill hero or villain and he said well tony pandy which is an instant very early in churchill's

01:37:34.000 career where he's accused erroneously i'm told by his biographers uh of uh causing death in wales

01:37:43.760 in the police action and anyhow so this politician is asked winston churchill hero or villain he says

01:37:50.400 tony pandy villain and other people who hate churchill say you know he drank too much

01:37:56.320 or something it's not seen as being a vice by all of us but anyhow and um um and other people say well

01:38:04.320 the bengal famine which again by the way they they historically they deeply misrepresent

01:38:09.920 uh but they they they come up with some things which they can say um show him in a bad light

01:38:17.520 and that what interests me in this is not um just where they're being historically inaccurate

01:38:23.920 but but the fact that they would wish to be so grotesquely unfair because it seems to me that if

01:38:30.400 we could agree on one thing and again this comes back slightly to the issue of truth but

01:38:33.840 if we could agree on one thing it ought to be that if you have almost single-handedly

01:38:41.520 at one point held the line and then turned the world back around and against the man we are in

01:38:48.800 agreement on as being the most evil man in history if you bear if you if you have a legitimate claim 1.00

01:38:57.200 to take the credit the most credit of anyone for defeating nazism there ought to be a good word to 0.99

01:39:04.720 put in for you every now and then you would say it seems to me um now now but here if i may say so

01:39:13.200 is the underlying question from that this is a long-winded answer to your question because i could go on

01:39:17.440 all day on this question there's such an important and interesting question but the thing that's

01:39:22.480 interesting to me is what might a young person looking at this take from it and you see my view is that

01:39:30.480 among other things it enormously degrades um demoralizes and enervates people because it says we as a

01:39:43.280 society are so unforgiving that you could defeat adolf hitler and if you'd once got drunk you're toast

01:39:53.440 we won't forgive you we won't say you're a good person if you defeated nazism but you once made an

01:40:03.840 off-color joke nothing to be said for you anymore now what does this do if you're a young person

01:40:10.240 surveying this strange unforgiving culture which is so unforgiving in the present and so unforgiving of

01:40:16.240 the past i think what it says to young people is it's best not to act in the world at all because

01:40:26.560 it seems nothing is good in history when people act so maybe we should be these harmless

01:40:40.720 people who wished we weren't here because also if we weren't here the environment would be getting on

01:40:45.040 so much better and and the moss and the trees and the grass would just be having a wonderful time

01:40:50.960 without us and and i worry about what this says but as i say i mean i could go on all day but my main

01:40:58.720 beef with it is it's so unfair to people in history because it makes this fundamental misunderstanding of

01:41:06.000 thinking a fundamental error of thinking that people in history acted knowing what was going to

01:41:11.680 happen like we know looking back at them we have that a lot in in canada right now and uh and i'm

01:41:17.840 astonished to see all these books written about winston churchill that he's a rank imperialist and

01:41:21.760 genocidal character it's a huge distortion yeah absolutely you know i i i suppose we can just correct

01:41:30.320 it by continuously pointing to factual material or yes or or you can always rely on the fact that

01:41:38.640 whatever heroes the people who do this come up with um can regularly be discovered to have been

01:41:44.640 human beings themselves and to have done something wrong which might be a learning curve for them

01:41:51.040 but never quite steep enough yeah great well perry thanks for the question i think they do the same

01:41:57.840 thing to sir johnny mcdonald the first prime minister of canada so it's it's par for the course here

01:42:02.400 so uh douglas we have uh five questions left i think about 15 minutes so i think the best strategy

01:42:08.800 here is maybe to do two questions at a time if you're okay with that so we'll just ask uh people

01:42:13.840 to do succinct questions and then you can kind of think about both of them and answer at the same

01:42:17.760 time if that's okay so oliver if we can promote estevan and zork and then we'll allow estevan you can

01:42:24.800 ask your question first and then we'll allow zork to ask a question so estevan the floor is yours

01:42:30.080 uh yes my question is about uh well i'm trying to be as relevant as possible uh to the current

01:42:38.800 conversation uh how can we reel in uh minorities away from the grip of the extreme left because

01:42:46.720 uh i mean i studied a master's in linguistics and in in that domain like uh they often talk about the

01:42:53.600 white people as the oppressors as if there weren't any uh historical oppression within

01:43:00.080 their own communities or as if their own communities were homogeneous which they're not

01:43:05.120 and uh anybody who has lived in an indigenous community knows that there you can't find two

01:43:10.480 people who think alike and uh oppression is often depicted as uh the problem of people with less

01:43:18.320 melanin when in fact i mean my personal tribe has a history uh and uh we we are the culture in the

01:43:26.480 america's with the most written text about oppression of people uh from above on their uh on the people

01:43:35.840 uh of that belong to their local uh communities and there's war there's uh oppression so how can we

01:43:43.280 counter that and bring real these people out of the grips of uh the extreme left great question

01:43:50.320 great thanks espen and now we'll get zork your question please hi my question is something that

01:43:57.840 you mentioned uh the same question was asked for me a few years ago and i was shocked out of my bits

01:44:04.000 realizing that i never thought about it in my life the question is what is your first principle

01:44:10.640 um gosh um let me take them in order um firstly um your area of expertise linguistics which is not mine

01:44:24.000 but i would make an observation if i may which is linguistics may be one of the hardest ones to wrestle

01:44:30.320 back like that um there are a set of things which i almost almost have the direction of travel built into

01:44:39.840 them um which i would put linguistics in um i won't get into it not least because you'll know more and

01:44:49.520 i'll i'll be shown up horribly but that i just my observation is that for instance it's to put it

01:44:57.440 it it's you know sort of simplest i would think that uh um it's if you'd said to me i graduated

01:45:06.400 in engineering how can we take engineers back from the grip grip of the far left you know i'd have

01:45:13.280 thought i'm not sure they are in the grip of the you know wanting to engineers my point is is that

01:45:22.560 i think some disciplines have it have have a tougher time on this than others i do think that there has

01:45:30.400 been a shift however in the last couple of decades uh it's what i try to outline in the man's of crowds

01:45:38.400 and i think the shift is the thing of telling people that the the worth comes from the identity

01:45:48.160 we touched on a bit of this earlier um there are there are in my experience an increasing number of

01:45:55.280 people who are rebelling against this but it has been the tide in all of our countries to different

01:46:02.480 extents in the last couple of decades that that that has been the direction of travel and um

01:46:11.680 what i think is going to make a gross generalization i think there is counter

01:46:15.840 um movement now quite well underway and some of the people we've spoken about today have

01:46:24.560 been leading that um i think there's a counter movement very much underway and it's my observation

01:46:30.480 that um that the smarter people coming up through university who among other things have access to

01:46:38.720 youtube and and and you know contrary voices have been learning for some time

01:46:45.920 they've been sold some lies and they have an unparalleled unprecedented opportunity now

01:46:52.800 to um upgrade their software on a whole range of the things that that has been put into it by the

01:47:01.280 education system uh i'm just you know enormously struck and infused by the fact that that the reaction and

01:47:10.000 the rebellion against us is now starting to dominate in certain areas and in certain places but um there's

01:47:19.440 definitely a movement against it somewhere um the question on first principle i don't think i could say i

01:47:28.240 have one first principle um uh i think uh i have a set of them and one of them it was was touched on earlier which is that

01:47:40.720 i i think if i had a first principle it would probably be that that that that the purpose of life is to pursue truth

01:47:48.560 and that it is a thing that that exists and can be found and that it isn't um a relative concept um

01:47:59.440 there's many other things i could i could go on with but i think everything starts from there for instance um

01:48:08.080 i do believe that truth outs and that when truth and error meet error can't win in a fair fight um

01:48:20.080 um that's a pretty foundational one for me great thank you so we have three questions to go i think

01:48:29.200 we should just ask them all at once and then we can we can wrap this thing up in the next 10 minutes

01:48:33.760 or so uh so we have yule andre and bill let's promote them all and we'll start with yule you can go

01:48:40.800 first and the floor is yours great hold on sorry i'll just get the video going hi it's actually eula oh

01:48:49.600 sorry yule don't worry so good uh hi douglas so my question is about the the the root causes of the

01:48:57.280 identity politics and sort of the sort of the neo-left trends that you've discussed and i grapple

01:49:02.800 with this because there seem to be two things that i think it could be and i wanted your thoughts and

01:49:07.840 uh one is sort of the the decline of things that i think typically gave people meaning such as religion

01:49:14.240 and family even and and those sorts of you know societal bulwarks that typically were the things

01:49:21.120 that people would um live for and then the other one seems to be just a an increase in the standard

01:49:28.480 of living and the fact that we don't necessarily want for anything you know until 1990 at least we

01:49:34.000 had the communists in the cold war to sort of uh give some broader perspective to to our society whereas

01:49:42.560 now you know there's not that much left and i think that perhaps as a result of not studying history

01:49:48.640 or thinking about it too much we we kind of take for granted that there won't be another war you know

01:49:53.360 nothing big is going to happen nothing bad is going to happen so the thing that we could maybe focus on

01:49:57.920 because nothing major it really affects us like hunger or lack of shelter is that we can just tackle the

01:50:04.320 remaining bigotry that there is so so those are the two things that i grapple with and i just wanted to

01:50:08.400 think about that um great thank you julie let's go to andre for your question please yeah i'd like to

01:50:17.200 circle back to where candace started uh you know the comment on you know the c19 reaction or over

01:50:24.480 reaction i agree with you douglas that i mean i think we all need to be better informed before we draw

01:50:29.920 any conclusions or maybe change our minds about things but that said one of our members professor

01:50:38.400 party wrote a what i thought was a great article in one of our national newspapers the headline was

01:50:43.920 let's not double down on the nanny state and i compare that with a number of other pieces that i've

01:50:50.000 read that have made the point or tried to make the point that those who now question the central

01:50:57.600 importance of the administrative state in our society have been proven wrong once and for all it

01:51:04.080 strikes me as awfully presumptuous and again time will tell but i'd really be curious to get your

01:51:08.640 reaction to that idea great great thank you andre and final question will come from bill brooks

01:51:18.080 bill uh hi douglas thank you um since we all sort of live in the north atlantic triangle here um i just

01:51:26.880 couldn't let the sort of afternoon go by without getting your uh opinion on the state of the race in the

01:51:32.800 united states uh so my good conservative friends uh absolutely suffer from trump disrangement syndrome

01:51:41.200 and uh you know i know that there are cringeworthy moments and so on and so forth but i'd be interested

01:51:47.120 to know uh how you think he stacks up against a party uh that basically exemplifies most of the error

01:51:56.880 that you have pointed out uh throughout your last uh your last three books well thank you for all of

01:52:04.720 those let me do them in order um uh why has this come about eula asks um i do think i think you're you

01:52:14.240 you pretty much covered it um it is it is these these things you refer to it is it is the product of

01:52:22.880 of of um wealthy late modernity um uh societies where there's not enough going bad for people's

01:52:35.360 comfort and so they would like to see things going bad that aren't going on in order to feel heroic in

01:52:44.400 some way uh this is what uh i i uh idea i lifted from uh uh the late uh with credit i should stress

01:52:54.000 from the late australian political philosopher ken minogue um who referred to this as george in

01:52:59.360 retirement syndrome that george gets so much acclaim for having slain the dragon that he uh staggers

01:53:05.840 around the land looking for more dragons to slay and it's possible that he might not find any more

01:53:11.040 dragons and start killing smaller and smaller animals and finally one day may even be found

01:53:16.720 swinging his sword into thin air and i do think that that to a great extent the so-called social

01:53:23.280 justice warriors and others have have um have been doing that they have been if not swinging their

01:53:29.840 swords at thin air then they've been swinging them at basically small animals that that are not

01:53:38.880 that threatening or not as threatening as they like to pretend in order to pursue their historic

01:53:45.680 their heroic pose um i think the decline of religion that you refer to is obviously a huge thing in

01:53:52.800 that i think i i say in the strange death of europe i i think one of the oddest things in our societies is

01:53:58.480 that as religion uh has receded from them we haven't paid enough attention to the fact that our instinct

01:54:06.880 instinct for it would of course remain whether you think that's an instinct because we're meaning

01:54:12.640 seeking creatures or because we're meaning seeking creatures and there is meaning whichever of those

01:54:17.440 paths you you you take it's it's extraordinary to just lose the idea lose your explanation

01:54:25.520 and then not think that people are going to search for things to fill that void

01:54:30.080 and i think a huge amount of the um of this can be explained that way and by the way the most obvious

01:54:37.840 one is again the reminder that the so-called activists um always remind us of which is of course

01:54:44.720 that if you're going to really behave appallingly you have to think you're doing so in the name of good

01:54:50.480 uh and that's that that's something they demonstrate i think i think daily um uh c19 state control i

01:54:59.280 haven't read that piece in question i i will i will look that up um i there are several things to say

01:55:06.960 the first is i think it's true that whenever a crisis comes along like this which not very many

01:55:13.280 it isn't true to say that it's unexpected there were people who were expecting them but they were in

01:55:19.120 their own silos and they weren't particularly widely listened to because there are lots of things

01:55:25.200 that can happen and go wrong and and you know the experts were considering it but wider society was

01:55:32.320 not i'm i'm very aware that in recent weeks people who've never thought about pandemics before have

01:55:39.120 found this pandemic to miraculously vindicate all their pre-existing beliefs on things that have nothing

01:55:46.640 to do with pandemics so you know people whose big beef was inequality you know saying that this is why

01:55:55.680 inequality needs to be addressed more by the way this is this is an error of the left and right and

01:56:02.000 everyone else as well i mean you know uh uh there are right-wing figures who have been using this to

01:56:07.680 justify their own pre-existing views there's no doubt about it that the the state uh i mean for instance the

01:56:13.680 nhs in the uk comes out of this just immeasurably stronger than when it went in i would i don't

01:56:19.360 think any government of right or left will be able to talk about even diminishing growth in spending on

01:56:25.360 the nhs ever again or i mean not for decades um uh and and and and the one thing i would say on the

01:56:36.160 on the sort of security state thing our one of our former um members of the supreme court uh uh assumption

01:56:45.600 um warned about the police state sort of emergence in britain i'm i'm not by any means sort of uh blithe

01:56:58.080 about this but i think that there's enough i think the public don't react well when there's police

01:57:05.520 overreach for instance there has been police overreach in the uk and there's been enormous

01:57:11.520 pushback against it to the extent that you know the police have been told not to do some of the

01:57:17.760 overreach they've done um so i i i don't know my own view is that with futurology what people always

01:57:26.080 have to bear in mind is the possibility that all things happen and that it's not a case of you know

01:57:32.800 we'll have more state or less or more identity politics or less identity politics i think that

01:57:39.760 it's possible for everybody to double down on what their thing is in the wake of an event like this

01:57:47.280 so that for instance i think some people will become far more cautious in their behavior and i think some

01:57:53.600 people will become very incautious it's like many people will not go to live music events for a long

01:57:59.600 time to come even after the governments say it's safe to do so other people will say you know i'm

01:58:06.160 willing to take the risk because i just can't not do that and i think all of these things are likely to

01:58:12.960 happen simultaneously i don't think any of it is written um the third and final question the u.s

01:58:19.600 presidential race we were getting along so well and then you introduced the subject of donald trump into it

01:58:24.000 uh um um i do watch it i don't have any greater insight than anyone else really i mean i've i've

01:58:32.160 followed american politics pretty closely all my life but everybody now has a view on american

01:58:36.800 politics and it's almost like the soap opera of course in everybody's lives all around the planet

01:58:42.320 every day um i think the one thing i would say is yes the democratic party has shifted enormously in

01:58:49.200 recent years but then so is the republican party and we have lived in through a a decade in which

01:58:55.360 at any point either of the main parties could have split completely and that strikes me as being very

01:59:00.080 interesting uh we were talking about the immediate demolition of the republican party until donald trump

01:59:07.520 won the election and then everyone was talking about the possibility the democrats were going to fall

01:59:11.680 apart um they have moved an enormous amount i think it's still telling that they have ended up with the

01:59:18.880 safest imaginable option for them uh in um a presidential candidate who is clearly not fit to run it seems

01:59:29.360 to me um i mean i think from what i see uh somebody very close to joe biden should say you're not

01:59:39.440 gonna make yourself or us proud if you go ahead with this um

01:59:45.360 uh he better make sure he gets a very good vice presidential nominee uh running mate um i also

01:59:54.880 think it's gonna be i mean it goes out saying it's gonna be the ugliest election race ever every election

02:00:00.080 race in america is the ugliest but there's always somewhere further low down you can go 1.00

02:00:04.640 um i think that donald trump will murder joe biden on stage frankly and i don't say that with enormous 0.97

02:00:14.480 relish because as was shown in the trump clinton debates there's just nothing trump won't do including

02:00:22.160 you know parading all of the candidates husbands ex-girlfriends and mistresses you know i mean 0.98

02:00:29.840 there would do what he'll do with biden will be brutal and the truth is it'll be brutal because

02:00:36.320 it's not hard to be brutal with biden at this point i just think that the um american public who are

02:00:43.440 turned off by all of this are right to be turned off by it uh and i just feel torn myself because america is

02:00:51.440 in such a degraded place today politically and culturally and journalistically and much more

02:00:59.520 you know trump is right about the media to a great extent but i hate thinking he's the cure for it

02:01:07.440 and and much more uh it's um it's one of the times when i'm very glad i live in the uk

02:01:14.480 i might even be glad to live in canada rather than america i don't know but uh

02:01:19.520 i might sound like a benadian audience but these have been enormously interesting and wide-ranging and

02:01:25.680 very stimulating i have to say very educated i think it's one of the most uh credentialed

02:01:31.200 audiences i've spoken to so um i should also thank all of you for the questions they've been really

02:01:36.960 simulating well thank you douglas we just really admire your ability to touch on so many topics at once

02:01:43.280 i've gotten so many messages and emails from civitas members thanking you for your time for your

02:01:48.560 insight for your thoughtfulness and we really appreciate you spending the time with us uh today

02:01:53.520 giving up your saturday evening so thank you so much from civitas we hope to uh keep in touch

02:02:00.000 and um to everyone watching all the civitas uh members thank you for your contribution and for

02:02:05.360 listening and for engaging with us it's really been a fun uh stimulating afternoon uh for me here in

02:02:11.120 toronto and hopefully for you um douglas as well so from all of us at civitas thank you thank you so

02:02:16.400 much and uh that that brings the end to to our session so thank you thank you candace stay well

02:02:23.440 okay thank you

Juno News - May 07, 2020

Ep. 1 ｜ Douglas Murray ｜ Mob rule, identity & the future of the nation state

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